Evangelical Movement of Wales

Statement of Doctrinal Belief

Controlling Principle
We believe the Holy Scriptures, as originally given, to be the infallible Word of God, of divine inspiration, and
therefore we accept them as our sole authority in all matters of faith and practice.
Specific Doctrinal Beliefs
As a consequence of our faith in the infallible Word of God we believe the following as essential doctrines of the
Christian faith.
We believe:
a) in the only true and living God, the Holy Trinity of divine Persons in perfect unity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
each of whom is co-equal and co-eternal, and sovereign in creation, providence and redemption.
b) in the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is holy, righteous, full of grace, mercy, compassion and
love. In His infinite love He sent forth the Son, that the world through Him might be saved.
c) in the Lord Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God, whose true humanity and full deity were mysteriously and
really joined in the unity of His divine Person. We believe in His virgin birth, in His perfect life and teaching, in
His substitutionary, atoning death on the cross, where He triumphed over Satan, sin and death, in His bodily
resurrection and His ascension into heaven, where He now sits in glory at the right hand of God.
d) in the Holy Spirit, the third Person of the Godhead, whose work is indispensable to regenerate the sinner, to
lead him to repentance, to give him faith in Christ, to sanctify the believer in the present life and fit him to enjoy
fellowship with God. For spiritual power and effectiveness His ministry is essential to the individual Christian and
to the Church.
e) that as a result of the Fall all men are sinful by nature. Sin pollutes and controls them, infects every part of their
being, renders them guilty in the sight of a holy God and subject to the penalty which, in His wrath and
condemnation, He has decreed against it.
f) that through faith (and only faith) in the Lord Jesus Christ, whose death was a perfect oblation and satisfaction
for our sins, the sinner is freely justified by God who, instead of reckoning to us our sins, reckons Christ's
righteousness to our account. Salvation is therefore by grace and not by human merit.
g) that the Lord Jesus Christ will return personally, visibly and gloriously to this earth, to receive His saints to
Himself and to be seen of all men. As the righteous Judge, He will divide all men into two, and only two,
categories the saved and the lost. Those whose faith is in Christ will be saved eternally, and will enter into the
joy of their Lord, sharing with Him His inheritance in heaven. The unbelieving will be condemned by Him to hell,
where eternally they will be punished for their sins under the righteous judgement of God.

My Challenge to the Penal Satisfaction Theory Implicit in the EMW's Creed

O God heavenly father, which of thy tender mercie diddest geve thine only sonne Jesu Christ to
suffre death upon the crosse for our redempcion, who made there (by his one oblacion once
offered) a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifyce, oblacion, and satysfaccyon, for the sinnes of the
whole worlde and did institute, and in his holy Gospell commaund us, to celebrate a perpetuall
memory of that his precious death, untyll his comming again: Heare us (O merciful father) we
besech thee; and with thy holy spirite and worde, vouchsafe to bl
esse and sanc
tifie these
thy gyftes, and creatures of bread and wyne, that they maie be unto us the bodye and bloude of thy
moste derely beloved sonne Jesus Christe. Who in the same nyght that he was betrayed: tooke
breade, and when he had blessed, and geven thankes: he brake it, and gave it to his disciples,
saiyng: Take, eate, this is my bodye which is geven for you, do this in remembraunce of me..
From The Supper of the Lorde and the Holy Communion, called the Masse, in the First Book of
Common Prayer, 1549

(Proof texts favoured by Penal Satisfactionists have been highlighted in red.)

MY CHIEF OBJECTION to the formulation of EMW's Statement of Doctrinal Belief, as it stands, is that the
reference in Article (f) to Christ's death being a perfect oblation and satisfaction for our sins has taken these
words from the Roman Catholic eucharistic service in the Common Prayer Book of 1549. Do the EMW have an
ecumenical agenda, or do they still forswear that form of apostasy in liturgical Christianity in which priests employ
an oblation by offering up bread and wine to God to represent the Body and Blood of Christ? Protestants have
always believed that the Mass, that developed from Penitentialism (a system for satisfying God with penances
and transferring any surplus merit thus obtained to sinners), impugns Christ in His redemptive role, as it replaces
the Lamb, who offered himself as a unique and perfect sacrifice once for all time (Heb.9:26), with priests calling on
him to repeat that sacrifice daily with a consecrated host (Latin for 'victim') (see Appendix 1).
The idea of Christ's making satisfaction for sins, did not originate with Anselm, with whom the term is usually
associated, but with Athanasius in the fourth century. According to A.J. Wallace and R.D. Rusk (Moral
Transformation - The Original Christian Paradigm of Salvation, p. 287), Athanasius read the passage in Genesis
(in which God told Adam he would die if he ate the forbidden fruit) as a promise from God. He felt that God was
obliged to keep his word, and that, if Christ saved humanity from death, God had broken on his promise that
sinning would lead to death. Athanasius seems to have muddled through several attempts to absolve God on this
account. In his favoured explanation, he saw Jesus' death as sufficient to satisfy the requirement that sin must lead
to death. Jesus' death thus vindicated God's word and, through his death, Jesus fulfilled God's promise.
Athanasius still held that Jesus had given an example and teachings to humanity by which they could do good
and gain a positive final judgement. In addition, he believed that Jesus had saved humanity from non-existence by
his Spiritual Union, and that he had also vindicated God's word that sin would lead to death. These latter two ideas
arose as new ideas to Christian theology. Many Greek theologians who held to Platonic ideas held to the Spiritual
Union view. Athanasius' idea of Christ's death fulfilling the promise of Genesis 3 was not so widely adopted.
Traces of it can be found in a few subsequent fourth century writings, such as the works of Ambrose of Milan and
Cyril of Jerusalem. Yet the more general idea that Christ's death fulfilled a need for death would eventually take
shape as one of the key tenets of Western Christianity.
So, for Athanasius, the reason why Christ had to die was to satisfy the requirement that sin must lead to death. In
dying Christ was bearing the indignation that lay upon us.
Chrysostom speaks of His sacrifice putting away sin and punishment, while Augustine refers to His enduring in
our place death's curse and penalty. For Anselm in the 11th century sin defrauds God of His honour, requiring
compensation that man should give and only God can. So a God-man paid the debt the debt of death. We can see
how the death-as-satisfaction idea of Athanasius shaped the Latin Atonement. Centuries later, the old Catholic
formula, perfect oblation and satisfaction is being applied by the EMW to a forensic scenario whereby the
sinner is freely justified by God who, instead of reckoning to us our sins, reckons Christ's righteousness to our
account. I maintain that this is the Latin Atonement, that the Reformers derived from Augustine and Anselm,
remodelled with a legalistic, forensic significance that is peculiarly Calvin's theory.
My theological sympathies are with the Anabaptists, who recognized that the Reformers did not go far enough in
repudiating Romish idolatry and mysticism. Examining EMW's Statement and reviewing my experience of
evangelical ministries, I see the Biblical doctrine of Christ's High Priestly/Sacrificial Atonement presented as if it
required for its efficacy the substitutionary bearing of punishment as a purely extrinsic matter that had little to do
with the man who suffered on the cross and his stated reasons for doing so, such as John 14:30,31 and 15:18-25. I
understand by the Biblical Atonement that the bond that ties us to sin (Lk.11:21,22) is broken by Jesus' payment of
the ransom of our life with His life (Lev.17:11; Mk.10:45), so that we are freed to triumph over the powers
(Col.2:15), since it is from the spiritual death of sin that we are quickened into new life with Him and our sins
forgiven (Rom.5:7-11; Eph.1:7; Col.2:13). This view combines the Moral Influence theory, the church's original
teaching on the Atonement, with the Christus Victor theory, a logical development of it by Justin Martyr. That the
Moral Influence theory was the original teaching of the church was the basis of A.J. Wallace and R.D. Rusk's
excellent thesis, Moral Transformation - The Original Christian Paradigm of Salvation. Clement (AD 97) was
one of its earliest exponents, since he had declared that Christ died on account of sin, on purpose to spur
repentance. Since Clement was Paul's disciple, it is a more trustworthy basis for understanding the doctrine of
salvation by grace than a later dogma that supposes that Christ's death was a perfect oblation and satisfaction to
God, enabling Him to reckon Jesus's righteousness to our account. This Augustinian view frustrates any
intelligible understanding of Christ's self-proclamation as the Word, triumphant over the world's lies (Christus
Victor) and human exemplar of good (Moral Influence theory) in such verses as Jn.5:22-27; 8:42-47 and Paul:
he humbled himself in obedience to God and died a criminal's death on a cross. Therefore, God elevated him

to the place of highest honor and gave him the name above all other names, that at the name of Jesus every
knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth (Phil.2:8-10, NLT).
According to Paul it is not the death, but His self-abnegating life (the same attitude we should have, Phil.2:5) that
saves. By God's decree, due to a miscarriage of justice Jesus died a criminal's death to show sin as it really is, so
that it can be repudiated (Isa.53:5,6,11; cf. Ac.2:22-36; Jn.3:14; Rom.6; 2 Co.5: 21; Ga.6:14).
Paul did not write in Gal.3:13 that God was cursing His Son, for he omits the important qualifier in Dt.21:23, by
God. Had his soteriology been propitiatory, he would have elaborated the verse that Penal Satisfactionists love to
eisegete. The Levitical sacrifices dealt only forensically with individual transgressions without removing them.
But now Christ has died to remove sin as a principle: But now, once for all, at a completion of the ages, he has
been manifested for a removal of sin by the sacrifice of himself (Heb.9: 26; cf. 1 Jn.3:5).
The time, as well as His sacrifice, was propitious, for the Old Covenant had conclusively proved man's failure and
powerlessness to keep the Law. Paul brings history and autobiography together in Romans 7 to characterize sin in
terms that W.H. Auden later characterized: All sin tends to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is
what is called damnation. A hanged man symbolised that fate in the eyes of Israel. Jesus endured that unmerited
shame to show his identification with those He had come to save. The curse of the cross was therefore used by
Paul as a threat to deter the Galatians from their Judaizing theology and as an invitation to see in Jesus' open arms
a welcome by a loving Father who no longer counted their sins against them. In the same sense God made Him to
be sin for us (2Co.5:21).
All the priests stand at their duties every day, offering over and over again the same sacrifices which are quite
incapable of taking sins away. He, on the other hand, has offered one single sacrifice for sins, and then taken
his place for ever, at the right hand of God, where he is now waiting until his enemies are made into a footstool
for him. By virtue of that one offering, he has achieved the eternal perfection of all whom he is sanctifying.
The Holy Spirit assures us of this; for he says, first:
'This is the covenant I will make with them when those days arrive'; and the Lord goes on to say:
'I will put my laws into their hearts and write them on their minds. I will never call their sins to mind, or
their offences. When all sins have been forgiven, there can be no more sin-offerings' (Heb.10:11-18)
In Article (c), Christ's substitutionary atoning death guides us to His triumph over Satan, sin and death but
does not explain it; so let Paul: You know that if you agree to serve and obey a master you become its slaves. You
cannot be slaves of sin that leads to death and at the same time slaves of obedience that leads to righteousness.
You were once slaves of sin, but thank God you submitted without reservation to the creed you were taught. You
may have been freed from the slavery of sin, but only to become 'slaves' of righteousness. (Rom.6:16-18).
Brown's commentary on Heb.9:26 put a similar meaning into the Atonement: By Christ's death it is not only that
the devil is deposed and the power of death overcome, but also that sin is vanguished. Jesus came to rob sin of its
tyranny and its suffocating stranglehold on man. Obviously, sin is still at large in the world, just as death and the
devil are still active, but all three have been robbed of their former hold on man. In Christ we are free from their
enslaving power (Christ Above All, IVP). Both statements put the efficacy to purge sin in the blood of Christ.
That is where I also put it. But does the EMW?
I have misgivings about Atonement by penal satisfaction that lies at the heart of Reformed soteriology with its
focus on equivalences, imputations and the exchanges of reified guilt and righteousness between the sinner and
Christ that belong to an hypothesized heavenly courtroom. Paul's understanding of Justification, by contrast, could
not be simpler. Making Justification synonymous with forgiveness, he quotes the Psalmist, Blessed are they
whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered to illustrate the reckoning of faith in Christ to the
believer for righteousness (Rom.4:7).
Now the estimate that I would form of EMW's use of the term, faith in Christ in Article (f), based on what
follows, whose death was a perfect oblation and satisfaction for our sins (slotted in as a seeming digression, but
actually the centre-piece) is that it is not faith in Christ per se that is reckoned for righteousness (as in Rom.4:7),
but faith in a hypothesized scenario in which the mystical transfer of moral character or culpability from the sinner
to Christ is balanced by the mystical transfer of the opposites from Christ to the sinner. This is the inference I
draw from the EMW creed where it is claimed that God, instead of reckoning to us our sins, reckons Christ's
righteousness to our account, because the implication of this transaction is that Christ can then justly receive, as
if he were a sinner, a punishment from God which would satisfy His justice (the oblation and satisfaction). This
is the key to Calvin's soteriology. But this is not what Paul says in Gal.3:13 or 2 Co.5:21 or in Rom.4.3. Faith has
evolved into something to be interpreted by theologians, and sin has changed into something not quite real.

Satisfactionism developed from its infant stages in the Penitential System and the Mass grafted into it into the
orthodoxy we know today. I record that Eusebius (263340) wrote, The Lamb of God was chastized 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, the insults, and the dishonour, which were due to us, and drew down upon himself the appointed curse,
being made a curse for us. Athanasius (297-373) wrote, The Logos took the judgment up into himself, and
suffering in the flesh for all men. Chrysostom (344-407) compared God to a king, beholding a robber and
malefactor under punishment, giving his well-beloved son to be slain, and transferred the death and the guilt from
him to his son (who was himself of no such character), that he might both save the condemned man and clear him
from his evil reputation. Augustine (354-430) wrote, But Christ without guilt took upon himself our
punishment, in order that he might thus expiate our guilt, and do away with our punishment. The modern
theologian, Gustaf Auln wrote: Anselm's theory of the death of Christ is clearly built on legalistic
presuppositions; his whole theological structure is built on the penitential system. The key term in Anselm's idea of
Christ's death is "satisfaction." In contrast to Calvin after him, who regarded the punishment of Christ as the
satisfaction of God, Anselm saw the problem of the Atonement as either satisfaction or punishment. A third
alternative of God putting away sins by compassion alone, without payment or punishment, is unfitting and
improper for God. "The honor taken away must be repaid, or punishment must follow; otherwise, either God will
not be just to himself, or he will be weak in respect to both parties; and this is impious to think of... It is not fitting
for God to pass over anything in his kingdom undischarged... to pass over sin unpunished. The best gauge for
understanding Anselm is the Mediaeval honour system of his day. It saw the dishonouring of Christ as an
ontological necessity for God.
The reader will concede Anselm's great influence on Luther from the fact that, contrary to 1 Pe.1:19, Luther
refused to impute perfection to the Lamb that gives access to God, for he wrote, And indeed all the prophets saw
this in the Spirit, that Christ would be of all men the greatest robber, murderer, adulterer, thief, sacrilegious
person, blasphemer, etc... because He who is a sacrifice for the sins of the whole world now is not an innocent
person, and without sin, is not the Son of God born of a virgin, but a sinner who has and bears sin... The words,
God in Christ was reconciling the world to himself(2 Co.5:19) imply complete oneness of purpose. The Trinity
was maintained, even as Jesus was on the cross. Yet, while Paul did not separate Christ's actions from those of the
Father, Luther fancied Him excluded from the God-head. If Christ was made a sinner, what should I infer from the
fact that He commended His spirit to God (Lk.23:46)?
God did not forsake Him. A proper exegesis of Eli, eli, lama sabachthani? (Mat.27:6) does not suggest that the
Son was abandoned, but rather left in the redemptive role to shed his blood. The Aramaic Peshitta NT reads: "Eli,
Eli lemana shabakthani," while Hebrew Psalm reads: "Eli, Eli lama azbatani." The Greek transliteration relates
to the Peshitta. Now the difference between azbatani (which means "forsake") and its Aramaic counterpart
shabakthani (which has many other meanings besides, including reserve, spare, keep, forgive, all deriving from
the idea of setting aside) is interesting. Jesus could have been saying For this you have kept me and bystanders
misheard the affirmation as a question. But there is no proof that Jesus did not speak in Hebrew, and azbatani in
Ps.22:1, which is a key declara-tion of His Messiahship, has always been rendered forsake. There is a very good
reason for Jesus to pray Psalm 22 to Himself, and parts out loud, since David's narrative clearly references His
own sufferings. If Evangelicals do not deny the Exemplary nature of the Atonement (Lk.9:23,24), no important
objection can be made against the view that Jesus was applying Psalm 22 not only to Himself in its entirety, but
also to them, to impress upon them this reassuring hope at the end. Suffering for Christ would occasion the
necessity to look behind the cry of desolation by reading the whole of Psalm 22, to reap the same reward at the
end as Jesus did. This is why, in the context of the suffering church (1 Pe.4:1), Peter put his memorable statement
about Jesus' sin-bearing where he does, after a homily about dealing with unjust punishment (1 Pe.2:24). If God
punished Christ as our substitute, there cannot be the need to endure that David paints:
For he has not ignored or belittled the suffering of the needy,
He has not turned his back on them, but he has listened to their cries for help (v.24).
Though believers may feel abandoned when they suffer, God is really closer than ever. This affirmative reading of
"Eli, Eli lemana shabakthani" acknowledges the importance of sacrifice that the damnation of Jesus does not. In
the Bible sacrifice is the condition of man's communion and fellowship with God, the act which unites man with
God. Thus the idea of sacrifice precludes the discontinuation of fellowship between Jesus and the Father on the
cross. For Luther to suggest that the Father abhorred or abandoned His Son also impugns the Oneness and
faithfulness of God (2Tim.2:13).
Calvin considered the Atonement simply as a transaction between God's wrathful judgment and His Son:
If Christ had merely died a corporeal death, no end would have been accomplished by it; it was requisite also,

that he should feel the severity of the Divine vengeance in order to appease the wrath of God, and satisfy his
justice. Hence it was necessary for him to contend with the powers of hell and the horror of eternal death."
[Inst.II.16:10].
The paradox that Jesus could suffer the horror of eternal death for a finite time was solved by an early exponent
of the Ransom Theory, Origen. He wrote, To whom was the ransom paid? Certainly not to God; can it then be to
the Evil One? For he had power over us until the ransom was given to him on our behalf, namely the life of Jesus;
and he was deceived, thinking that he could keep His soul in power. Origen also adds to our understanding of the
horror: For as the Father alone has immortality and our Lord took upon Himself, for His love to men, the death
He died for us, so to the Father alone the words apply, 'In Him is no darkness,' since Christ took upon Himself...
our darknesses. This He did, that by His power He might destroy our death and remove the darkness which is in
our soul.
Let the moral of the Parable of the Prodigal Son answer Origen, then Calvin. Did not the welcome extended by a
forgiving father remove the darkness from the younger son's soul? Of course it did, for we note that rehabilitation
was the end-result. Calvin's words, severity, vengeance, wrath, and satisfy justice are words of
retribution, and could have expressed the wishful thinking of the older son, whose errant brother was not the focus
of any attempt at behavioural change. The Parable, that furnished conclusive refutation of the Pharisees' legalism
and want of mercy, could have been an indictment of Calvin's bloody reign in Geneva. If Jesus exhorted His
followers to forgive their enemies without finding a substitute on which to vent their anger, should God need one?
After some heart-searching, Calvin thought so.
The Westminster Confession of Faith was written a century after the Institutes, on which it was based: He
endured most grievous torments immediately in his soul and most painful sufferings in his body. This brings me
to your state-ment in Article (f), implying that the wrath and condemnation decreed on man for sin, stated in (e),
are removed as an effect of Christ's death, and that this is logically entailed by the word, satisfaction. I do not
know if you are using the word in homage to the Latin Atonement or if your grounds for using it are Calvin's
theorizings: If the effect of his shedding of blood is that our sins are not imputed to us, it follows that God's
judgment was satisfied by that price (II. 17.4).
Now Calvinists always ask, in defence of this position: If Jesus' death does not satisfy God's wrath, what does?
But this eisegetes the ratificatory sense of Without the shedding of blood there is no remission (Heb.9:22; cf.
Ex.24:3-8). It also begs the question how the wrath is satisfied from an analogy with human emotional experience
that is false to the NT. In contrast to OT where God's wrath is visited by His direct action (Deut.9:7,8, 22,25;
Nb.16:46), in NT it expresses His fixed oppositon to evil, being worked out in the consequences sinners bring on
themselves by their irrational, ungodly conduct, embedded in the moral fabric of the universe (Rom.1:18-32; 1
Thess.2:16). If I am to be true to Paul's usage, I should understand the wrath to have come upon the Prodigal
before he came to his senses.
Anselm's dilemma as to how an acquitting God could still vindicate His justice had already been addressed by
Paul: This is what reveals the justice of God to us: it shows how faith leads to faith, or as scripture says: The
upright man finds life through faith (Rom.1:17). Christ's fidelity to God's purposes showed that He was worthy
of salvation, by virtue of which He lives and is the author of life (Heb.2: 9,10; Ac.3:14-16; 1 Jn.1:1). As we trust
and obey him, faith leads to faith, evincing God's power in us to avert the manifestations of wrath Paul describes.
This is salvation according to Romans 1.
Why must I re-think salvation as a forensic transaction? I doubt if Paul could have made sense of the Anselmian
terminology. If Justification = forgiveness, as Paul asserts in Rom.4:7, how can pardon, that comes on payment of a
debt in vicarious punishment, properly be acknowledged as pardon? Is not the Father simply taking money out of
his right (His Son's) pocket and transferring it to His left? If Christ = God this scenario should leave us bemused.
But don't we owe Christ? The whole basis of morality requires us to take responsibility on ourselves for our
wrongs, including Jesus' death (Ac.2:36; 7:51-53), heeding God's warnings against shedding innocent blood
(Ex.23:7). Anselm's vicarious debt-payment paralyzes moral thought and creates an unholy God who violates His
own code by making murder the basis for acquitting us. So Calvin's PST is adopted, which dramatizes Christ as a
mediator between a wrathful God and the condemned sinner, pleading for him while receiving His wrath into
Himself. If this is the manner our penalty is averted, it moves us. But this is replacing Anselmian blandness with
heresy: now the merciful Son = an implacable Abba! And this from the murderer of Oneness-believing Servetus
(cf. Standford Rives, Did Calvin Murder Servetus?).
If I thought that Divine vengeance effected the Atonement, how could I believe in the all-sufficient merits of
the blood of Christ, who offered Himself as the perfect sacrifice through His eternal Spirit, (to) purify our inner
self from dead actions so that we do our service to the living God (Heb.9:14)? Only as He is affirmed as priest
offering Himself in the perfect sacrifice for sin, can I make any sense of his proclamation as Divine victor over

evil and moral exemplar. For me, a closer examination of the Greek of 1 Pe.2:24 and Heb.9:28 destroys Calvin's
wrath-bearing myth at a stroke:
who carried up our sins himself in his own body to the tree, that we, having died to sins, may live to
righteousness; by whose wounds you are healed
so also the Anointed one, having been once for all offered for the many to bear away sin [Wilson's Greek
Diaglott]
Note that Wilson translates the preposition ana in an-negkein , so that we read carried up our sins, to bear
away sin. The reason why the preposition is not translated is that Protestantism agrees with the Church of Rome
in viewing the Atonement not internalized in God's all-sufficent High Priest and in what He did, but externalized
in some extran-eous force of God's wrath, punitively poured out on Him and acted out in the ritual of the Mass.
Since evangelicals subscribe, as I do, to EMW's controlling principle, We believe the Holy Scriptures, as
originally given, to be the infallible Word of God, of divine inspiration, and therefore we accept them as our sole
authority in all matters of faith and practice, they should be concerned not to read into any Scripture anything that
is not there. So I would expect evangelical commentators to allow themselves to be critiqued by the untranslated
preposition ana and by the sense of katakrine, condemn in e.g. Rom.8:3, and to shape doctrine accordingly. But
this is evidently not the case.
I will compare the NLT with the ESV Bible versions. The NLT translates an-negken, carried our sins. This is
passably accurate, while katekrine in Rom.8:3 is very good: in that body, God declared an end to sin's control
over us. These renderings are very difficult to reconcile with the idea of the satisfaction of Divine vengeance.
On the other hand, my Evangelical ESV Study Bible renders 1 Pe.2:24, bore our sins The note, which reads,
The unique sin-bearing death of Jesus is described here, betrays the conservative view of the authors that
doctrine helps us to read Scripture (the same conclusion that the Papal Council of Trent reached). The ESV
translation of Rom.8:3, he condemned sin in the flesh, is explained in the footnote as follows:
Jesus paid the full penalty for sin by his sacrifice (condemned sin).... in the flesh refers to Christ's body.
This illustrates the paradox of Evangelical reading, where a Bible text is thought to mean what later readers have
found in it, so that what we are taught is only a reflection of the history of other readers' responses. Jesus warns us
against such blindness (Mat.15:14). Hence, a particular reading tradition may create a blind-spot for texts like
Rom. 8:3. This is what has happened here. The ESV places the condemnation of sin in Christ's flesh, trying to
show that He was punished. This is syntactically wrong, for God's judgment is upon sin itself. En te sarki (in the
flesh) qualifies not sin(hamartian), even though sin precedes it, but condemn (katekrine), because, in an
identical construction, having destroyed the enmity in his flesh (Eph.2:14), translators avoid placing the enmity
in Jesus' flesh. En te sarki, being unqualified by 'his', autou (not as in Eph.2:14 and 1 Pe.2:24), is generic anyway,
and therefore denotes the sphere, range or extent of action in which God passed his verdict on sin. God is
condemning sin within its own domain. Since katakrinen has sin as its object, we may exclude the senses of
judging someone decisively as guilty or worthy of punishment (Helps Word Studies/Strongs), damning and
sentencing (Strongs EC). This leaves give judgment against (Strongs), and judge down, i.e. issue a penalty
(HWS). The senses of katekrinen in 2 Pe.2:6, He condemned the cities into ashes (over-threw), and in Heb.
11:7, Noah condemned the world matches the import of Jesus' words exactly in explanation of his imminent
sacrifice: There is now a Judgment of this world; the ruler of this world shall now be cast out (Jn.12:31). So the
idea of sin's punishment being in Christ's flesh is not in the Gk text of Rom.8:3, but is read into it by Evangelicals.
An equal danger is not seeing something that is there. In his salutation to the Corinthinians, Paul writes, As the
sufferings of Christ overflow to us, so, through Christ, does our consolation overflow (2 Cor.1:3,5). This recalls
language in Phil.3:10 (cf. Rom.8:17): All I want is to share his sufferings by reproducing the pattern of his
death. Peter writes similarly, Think of what Christ suffered in this life, and then arm yourselves with the same
resolution that he had: anyone who in this life has bodily suffering has broken with sin (1 Pe.4:2). Those
sufferings he later says he witnessed (1 Pe.5:1), so he is looking back to the cross. All this seems very difficult to
reconcile with the penal understanding of Christ's Passion, but it harmonizes perfectly with the idea that He was
voluntarily subjecting Himself to an agonizing death by people in rebellion against God (Mat.21:33-46; 23:32).
Jesus had previously told Zebedee's sons: You shall drink my cup (Mat.20:23). If the appeasement of God's
wrath was in His cup, how could they both drink from it?
Evangelicals answer that our sufferings differ from Jesus' in that they are not atoning. Presumably they would not
deny the exemplary nature of the cross, yet still assert the unique sin-bearing death of Jesus (1 Pe.2:24, ESV,
fn), for if He could embrace our human nature and assume our penalty without being a sinner, we, by virtue of our
inclusion in His Body, can surely share His sufferings without having to bear His penalty? But that is begging the

question, like proving that all swans are white by refusing to count as a swan any swan that is not white. Theories
of the Atonement are much less definite than swans. But the Damascus road encounter was foundational for Paul's
understanding of the church as Christ's Body, convincing him that when the church suffers, 'Christ' suffers, and
Mat.25:31-46 decisively confirms that empathy is key to the synergy of salvation. So why could He not also enter
into sinners' guilt feelings for transgressions against God and man (Rom.5:8; Ga.3:13; 2 Co.5:21)? The definition
of penal substitution requires that we regard Jesus' forsakenness on the cross (Mat.27:46) as absolute. Since this
view is false to what Jesus said about the Father never leaving him (Jn.8:16; 16:32) and the meaning of Psalm 22,
as I have shown, I must conclude that the question in dispute, Jesus' contending with the powers of hell and the
horror of eternal death on the cross, for which there is no Scriptural or factual evidence, is begged by Calvin's
ideas about what took place in the Atonement. And that is all.
Making the Scriptures fit the case for the Penal Atonement that one is trying to propose is arguing in a circle, and
it is intellectually dishonest, as I've shown in regard to the ESV mistranslation of 1 Pe.2:24 above. It would be
more sensible to fit the argument for Jesus' sin-bearing around real life and Biblical evidence of how sin brings
suffering and ruin on the innocent by its very nature. Isaiah's prophesy was that Jesus would accept the suffering
due to our iniquity (Isa.53: 6). This sobering but wonderful truth is better expressed in poetry, e.g. W. Williams'
The enormous load of human guilt:
In the fearful pangs of death/He wept, He prayed for me;/Loved and embraced my guilty soul/When nailed to the
tree.
Accepting that Jesus's sufferings and death establish my own guilt draws me out to having a true faith, so that I
want to share the same sufferings and reign in holiness with Him (2 Tim.2:11,12). It makes me want to establish
the argument for the true nature of the Atonement around the fact that I am now friendly towards God, when I
wasn't before just as Paul says, Now that we have been reconciled, surely we may count on being saved by the
life of his Son? (Rom.5:11). By His life working within me, I am enabled to become more like Him. I now see
that the idea that Jesus was merely fulfilling some legalistic requirement in dying or satisfying some demand for
bloody revenge can have no useful mean-ing, if my life echoes Paul's own testimony for Jesus' death being the
emotional spur that ends our enmity to God (v.8).
If I bring in Eusebius here, I see just how false to the Gospel narrative he was, when he wrote, How then can he
make our sins to be his own, and how did he bear our iniquities? The Lamb of God did not only these things for
us, but he underwent torments and was punished for us. He utterly failed to understand the extraordinary
empathy of the Suffer-ing Servant for the sinner's plight, which involved entering into his experience of shame
and ostracism. That is how he made our sins his own! Equally sterile is Anselm's view of redemption as the
discharge of a debt by vicarious payment which upholds God's honour. Paul wrote I am crucified and I no longer
live but Christ lives in me(Ga.2:20), not My sins have been paid for. The definition of redemption is to
bring back into useful service on payment of a price.
There is no hint that the Levitical animals were considered punished; and the NT nowhere talks of God being
appeased in any reference to the cross. The only place where Paul links Christ's death to deliverance from the
wrath is in Rom.5: 9, where he is referring to the Final Judgment. This lends support to the view of the Catholic
jurist, Grotius, that Christ's sufferings were a substitute for a penalty, rather than a substituted penalty. The
difference is crucial and diagnostic of Judaism's distinction from pagan God-placation. Bizarrely, Grotius'
recommendation in Defence (ch.10), his polemic against Socinus, was to cancel this vital distinction. Departing
from his Moral Governent thesis, he drew parallels between the Levitical sacrifices and human sacrifices to
Molech and Saturn to plead God-placation as an argument from nature to support the PST of Calvinism. It is
instructive that he drew no criticism from Protestants for this, but only for making Christ's sufferings quasi-penal.
One Jew I knew expressed abhorrence for the paganized God of Christendom.
This is Marvin Vincent's study of the Mercy-Seat or hilasterion in Romans 3:25, mistranslated propitiation in
KJV:
, A.V., propitiation, is almost always used in the Old Testament of the mercy-seat or golden
cover of the ark, and this is its meaning in Hebrews 9:5, the only other passage of the New Testament in
which it is found. In Ezekiel 43:14, Ezekiel 43:17, Ezekiel 43:20, it means a ledge round a large altar, and is
rendered settle in A.V.; Rev., ledge, in margin.
This term has been unduly pressed into the sense of expiatory sacrifice. In the case of the kindred verbs, the
dominant Old-Testament sense is not propitiation in the sense of something offered to placate or appease
anger; but atonement or reconciliation, through the covering, and so getting rid of the sin which stands
between God and man. The thrust of the idea is upon the sin or uncleanness, not upon the offended party.

Hence the frequent interchange with to sanctify, and to cleanse. See Ezekiel 43:26, where
shall purge, and shall purify, are used coordinately. See also Exodus 30:10, of the
altar of incense: "Aaron shall make an atonement () upon the horns of it - with the blood of the
sin-offering of atonement" ( purification). Compare Leviticus 16:20. The Hebrew terms are also
used coordinately.
Our translators frequently render the verb kaphar by reconcile, Leviticus 6:30; Leviticus 16:20; Ezekiel
45:20. In Leviticus 8:15, Moses put blood upon the horns of the altar and cleansed () the altar, and
sanctified () it, to make reconciliation ( ) upon it. Compare Ezekiel 45:15, Ezekiel
45:17; Daniel 9:24.
The verb and its derivatives occur where the ordinary idea of expiation is excluded. As applied to an altar or
to the walls of a house (Leviticus 14:48-53), this idea could have no force, because these inanimate things,
though ceremonially unclean, could have no sin to be expiated. Moses, when he went up to make atonement
for the idolatry at Sinai, offered no sacrifice, but only intercession. See also the case of Korah, Numbers
16:46; the cleansing of leprosy and of mothers after childbirth, Leviticus 14:1-20; Leviticus 12:7; Leviticus
15:30; the reformation of Josiah, 2 Chronicles 34; the fasting and confession of Ezra, Ezra 10:1-15; the
offering of the Israelite army after the defeat of Midian. They brought bracelets, rings, etc., to make an
atonement () before the Lord; not expiatory, but a memorial, Numbers 31:50-54. The Passover
was in no sense expiatory; but Paul says, "Christ our Passover was sacrificed for us; therefore purge out
() the old leaven. Let us keep the feast with sincerity and truth;" 1 Corinthians 5:7, 1 Corinthians
5:8.
In the Old Testament the idea of sacrifice as in itself a propitiation continually recedes before that of the
personal character lying back of sacrifice, and which alone gives virtue to it. See 1 Samuel 15:22; Psalm
40:6-10; Psalm 50:8-14, Psalm 50:23; Psalm 51:16, Psalm 51:17; Isaiah 1:11-18; Jeremiah 7:21-23; Amos
5:21-24; Micah 6:6-8. This idea does not recede in the Old Testament to be reemphasized in the New. On
the contrary, the New Testament emphasizes the recession, and lays the stress upon the cleansing and lifegiving effect of the sacrifice of Christ. See John 1:29; Colossians 1:20-22; Hebrews 9:14; Hebrews 10:1921; 1 Peter 2:24; 1 John 1:7; 1 John 4:10-13.
The true meaning of the offering of Christ concentrates, therefore, not upon divine justice, but upon human
character; not upon the remission of penalty for a consideration, but upon the deliverance from penalty
through moral transformation; not upon satisfying divine justice, but upon bringing estranged man into
harmony with God. As Canon Westcott remarks: "The scripture conception of is not that of
appeasing one who is angry with a personal feeling against the offender, but of altering the character of that
which, from without, occasions a necessary alienation, and interposes an inevitable obstacle to fellowship"
(Commentary on St. John's Epistles, p. 85).
In the light of this conception we are brought back to that rendering of which prevails in the
Septuagint, and which it has in the only other New-Testament passage where it occurs (Hebrews 9:5) mercy-seat; a rendering, maintained by a large number of the earlier expositors, and by some of the ablest of
the moderns. That it is the sole instance of its occurrence in this sense is a fact which has its parallel in the
terms Passover, Door, Rock, Amen, Day-spring, and others, applied to Christ. To say that the metaphor is
awkward counts for nothing in the light of other metaphors of Paul. To say that the concealment of the ark is
inconsistent with set forth is to adduce the strongest argument in favor of this rendering. The contrast with
set forth falls in perfectly with the general conception. That mercy-seat which was veiled, and which the
Jew could approach only once a fear, and then through the medium of the High-Priest, is now brought out
where all can draw nigh and experience its reconciling power (Hebrews 10:19, Hebrews 10:22; compare
Hebrews 9:8). "The word became flesh and dwelt among us. We beheld His glory. We saw and handled"
(John 1:14; 1 John 1:1-3). The mercy-seat was the meetingplace of God and man (Exodus 25:17-22;
Leviticus 16:2; Numbers 7:89); the place of mediation and manifestation. Through Christ, the antitype of
the mercy-seat, the Mediator, man has access to the Father (Ephesians 2:18). As the golden surface covered
the tables of the law, so Christ stands over the law, vindicating it as holy and just and good, and therewith
vindicating the divine claim to obedience and holiness. As the blood was annually sprinkled on the golden
cover by the High-Priest, so Christ is set forth "in His blood," not shed to appease God's wrath, to satisfy
God's justice, nor to compensate for man's disobedience, but as the highest expression of divine love for
man, taking common part with humanity even unto death, that it might reconcile it through faith and selfsurrender to God.

Through faith Connect with propitiation (mercy-seat). The sacrifice of Christ becomes effective through
the faith which appropriates it. Reconciliation implies two parties. "No propitiation reaches the mark that
does not on its way, reconcile or bring into faith, the subject for whom it is made. There is no God-welcome
prepared which does not open the guilty heart to welcome God" (Bushnell).
In His blood Construe with set forth, and render as Rev., by His blood; i.e., in that He caused Him to
shed His blood.
To declare His righteousness ( )
Lit., for a shewing, etc. Rev., to shew. For practical proof or demonstration. Not, as so often explained, to
shew God's righteous indignation against sin by wreaking its penalty on the innocent Christ. The shewing of
the cross is primarily the shewing of God's love and yearning to be at one with man (John 3:14-17). The
righteousness of God here is not His "judicial" or "punitive" righteousness, but His righteous character,
revealing its antagonism to sin in its effort to save man from his sin, and put forward as a ground of mercy,
not as an obstacle to mercy.
For the remission of sins that are past ( )
Rev., correctly, because of the passing over of the sins done aforetime. Passing over, praetermission, differs
from remission (). In remission guilt and punishment are sent away; in praetermission they are
wholly or partially undealt with. Compare Acts 14:16; Acts 17:30. sin, is the separate and
particular deed of disobedience, while includes sin in the abstract - sin regarded as sinfulness. Sins
done aforetime are the collective sins of the world before Christ.
Through the forbearance of God ( )
Rev., in the forbearance. Construe with the passing by. The word forbearance, from to hold up,
occurs in the New Testament only here and Romans 2:4. It is not found in the Septuagint proper, and is not
frequent in classical Greek, where it is used of a holding back or stopping of hostilities; a truce; in later
Greek, a permission.
The passage has given much trouble to expositors, largely, I think, through their insisting on the sense of
forbearance with reference to sins - the toleration or refraining from punishment of sins done aforetime. But
it is a fair construction of the term to apply it, in its primary sense of holding back, to the divine method of
dealing with sin. It cannot be said that God passed over the sins of the world before Christ without penalty,
for that is plainly contradicted by Romans 1:18-32; but He did pass them over in the sense that He did not
apply, but held back the redeeming agency of God manifest in the flesh until the "fullness of time." The
sacrifices were a homage rendered to God's righteousness, but they did not touch sin with the power and
depth which attached to Christ's sacrifice. No demonstration of God's righteousness and consequent hatred
of sin, could be given equal to that of the life and death of Jesus. Hence Paul, as I take it, says:
God set forth Christ as the world's mercy-seat, for the showing forth of His righteousness, because
previously He had given no such manifestation of His righteousness, but had held it back, passing over, with
the temporary institution of sacrifices, the sin at the roots of which He finally struck in the sacrifice of
Christ.
Romans 3:26
26To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which
believeth in Jesus.
At this time ( ) Lit., in the now season. See on Matthew 12:1. The contrast is with the past,
not the future.
Just and the justifier ( )

The sense and yet, often imported into and, is purely gratuitous. It is introduced on dogmatic grounds,
and implies a problem in the divine nature itself, namely, to bring God's essential justice into consistency
with His merciful restoration of the sinner. On the contrary, the words are coordinate - righteous and making
believers righteous. It is of the essence of divine righteousness to bring men into perfect sympathy with
itself. Paul's object is not to show how God is vindicated, but how man is made right with the righteous
God. Theology may safely leave God to take care for the adjustment of the different sides of His own
character. The very highest and strongest reason why God should make men right lies in His own
righteousness. Because He is righteous He must hate sin, and the antagonism can be removed only by
removing the sin, not by compounding it.
Him which believeth in Jesus ( )
Lit., him which is of faith in Jesus. See on Romans 3:22. Some texts omit of Jesus. The expression "of faith"
indicates the distinguishing peculiarity of the justified as derived from faith in Christ. For the force of out
of, see on Luke 16:31; see on John 8:23; see on John 12:49; see on 1 John 5:19.
The fact that a scapegoat in modern usage refers to an individual singled out for unmerited blame or punishment, a
fall guy or whipping boy, shows the degree of departure from the Biblical sense of hilasterion above. Scapegoat
derives from the translation of Heb. Azazel, which occurs in Lev.16:8: And Aaron shall place lots upon the two
he goats: one lot "For Yahweh," and the other lot, "For Azazel." Wikipedia elaborates: In Christian thought this
process prefigures the sacrifice of Christ on the cross through which God has been propitiated and sins can be
expiated. Jesus Christ is seen to have fulfilled both of the Biblical "types" - the Lord's goat that deals with the
pollution of sin and the scapegoat that removes the "burden of sin". Christians believe that sinners who own their
guilt and confess their sins, exercising faith and trust in the person and sacrifice of Jesus, are forgiven of their sins.
Since the second goat was sent away to perish, the word "scapegoat" has developed to indicate a person who is
blamed and punished for the sins of others.
But this is not how two eminent mediaeval Jewish scholars understand the Azazel goat. Far from involving the
recognition of Azazel as a deity, the sending of the goat, according to Nachmanides, was a symbolic expression of
the idea that the people's sins and their evil consequences were to be sent back to the spirit of desolation and ruin,
the source of all impurity. Maimonides, likewise, says that, as sins cannot be taken off one's head and transferred
elsewhere (Calvinists, take note!), the ritual is symbolic, enabling the penitent to discard his sins: These
ceremonies are of a symbolic character and serve to impress man with a certain idea and to lead him to repent, as
if to say, 'We have freed ourselves of our previous deeds, cats them behind our backs and removed them from us
as far as possible'. This is the entry in the Jewish Encyclopedia:
Azazel, the personification of impurity.
The very fact that the two goats were presented before YHWH before the one was sacrificed and the other
sent into the wilderness, was proof that Azazel was not ranked with YHWH, but regarded simply as the
personification of wickedness in contrast with the righteous government of YHWH. The rite, resembling, on
the one hand, the sending off of the epha with the woman embodying wickedness in its midst to the land of
Shinar in the vision of Zachariah (v. 6-11), and, on the other, the letting loose of the living bird into the open
field in the case of the leper healed from the plague (Lev. xiv. 7), was, indeed, viewed by the people of
Jerusalem as a means of ridding themselves of the sins of the year. So would the crowd, called Babylonians
or Alexandrians, pull the goat's hair to make it hasten forth, carrying the burden of sins away with it (Yoma
vi. 4, 66b; "Epistle of Barnabas," vii.), and the arrival of the shattered animal at the bottom of the valley of
the rock of Bet adudo, twelve miles away from the city, was signalized by the waving of shawls to the
people of Jerusalem, who celebrated the event with boisterous hilarity and amid dancing on the hills (Yoma
vi. 6, 8; Ta'an. iv. 8). Evidently the figure of Azazel was an object of general fear and awe rather than, as has
been conjectured, a foreign product or the invention of a late lawgiver.[For more on the true significance of
the scapegoat, please see Appendix 2.]
To summarise, the rituals on the Day of Atonement symbolize how Christ would do away with sin by sacrificing
himself (Heb.9:26). The sin-offering made to Yahweh is God's unconditonal act of sending His Son, as the High
Priest, to shed His own blood in Atonement. The Azazel goat, on the other hand, is not the sin-offering, but
represents our response to it the benefit aspect of the reconciliation, applied by the behavioural removal of sins
(Rom.6:6; 1 Jn.3:5). Thus, God made him to be sin (or a sin-offering) [Gk, hamartian means either, but sin keeps
the parallelism] that we may become the righteousness of God in him (2 Cor.5:21). This view honours both the
humanity and divinity of Jesus, who needed humanity to die by bloodshed and divinity to be able to offer himself
to God without spot through the eternal Spirit. This was so that we might purify our inner self from dead actions

so that we do our service to the living God (Heb.9:14). We have seen that the benefits of the Atonement are
conditioned upon man's response, paralleling the exorcism of sin by the Azazel goat and the purging of the
hilasterion. If the sin-offering made to Yahweh is unavailing to purify our inner self, it follows that Reformed
theologians have reduced Jesus to the level of the Levitical offerings.
Jesus took upon himself responsibility for the world's evil by becoming its victim (Isa.53:6), and also by
experiencing the malefactor's penalty and shame (Ga.3:13). We know that He provoked reflection by his disciples
about the former:
"If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as
its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the
world hates you. Remember the words I spoke to you: 'No servant is greater than his master.' If they
persecuted me, they will persecute you also... If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not be guilty
of sin. Now, however, they have no excuse for their sin. He who hates me hates my Father as well.... If I had
not done among them what no one else did, they would not be guilty of sin. But now they have seen these
miracles, and yet they have hated both me and my Father. But this is to fulfill what is written in their Law:
'They hated me without reason.' (Jn.15:18-25).
The idea that Jesus' fidelity would involve Him in contempt and suffering must have had echoes for Peter of
Isaiah's Suffering Servant prophesy, Isa.53:6, which inspired 1 Pe.2:24: who carried up our sins himself in his
own body to the tree, that we, having died to sins, may live to righteousness (Emphatic Diaglott). In previous
chapters the Servant was introduced as Israel, fulfilling a divine mission of revelation and salvation to the world
(Isa.42:6; 49:6). When Israel was sent into punitive exile, the faithful few would have seen themselves personified
in the one who suffered what most really deserved, but as agents to recover and purify them. By chapter 53 the
picture has grown darker, with the faithful remnant looking more like a single individual. Caiaphas had seen it,
when he declared to the Jews that it was better for one man to die for the people than for the whole nation to
perish (Jn.11:50). For Peter, illuminated by the Holy Spirit (Jn.16:9) on the day of Pentecost, verses 4 and 5
prophesied the events that unfolded before his eyes: We thought of him as someone punished... yet he was
pierced through for our faults. His inspired preaching convinced his hearers that, though despised and rejected,
Jesus had borne not His own but their sins, in order to bring them to salvation and peace. For no fault of His own
did He suffer, but only for others' good (Ac.2:22-38). Now those dogmatists who try to read into the narrative the
idea that God was punishing His Son, are simply not reading the text. Isaiah had not written in verse 4, God
thought of him as someone punished, but We (i.e. guilty Israel) thought this man Jesus was getting His just
deserts, but now realize that He was suffering because of us, with us and for us, to get our thinking back on the
right track, for we all... had gone astray (v.6). The vicariousness was moral, not penal. They thought it was
penal.
It is the suffering of actual experience that falls upon Christ, the inquity of us all (v.6). But now the office of the
Suffering Servant has become a priestly one, as a man's self-sacrifice in real life fulfils the old symbolism of the
Levitical offering.
Now dogmatists take that element in Jewish Messianism and Caiaphas seemed to have his finger on its pulse
(Jn.18:14) the concept of the righteous man suffering for and with the guilty in order to rescue them from
national disgrace, and invent a mystique about how Jesus was loaded down with our sins, understood to be so
much reified guilt. But Peter did not preach this on the day of Pentecost. If he had, he would have said something
based on the construction found in Jn.8:24: , to die loaded with evil deeds,
therefore unreformed. The LXX version of Isa.53:6 is: . The
same word, hamartiais, is used. If Jesus died loaded with sins in the sense in which sin-bearing is used in
Jn.8:24 he would be unreformed, and not the perfect Lamb of God.
But is it possible that hamartia means punishment, rather than moral turpitude? In other words, is bearing sin
equivalent to bearing the punishment for sin? No according to Strong's concordance. In Strongs NT266's entry for
(removal of sins) are these words:
the expression in Greek is or , ( = remove), in which the word,
hamartia does not of itself denote the guilt or penalty of sins...
Hamartia does not of itself denote the guilt or penalty of sins. Instead, hamartia is defined as missing the mark;
hence: (a) guilt, sin, (b) a fault, failure (in an ethical sense), sinful deed. Since hamartia is lawlessness (1 Jn.3:4),
it could also mean rebellious acts. In his witness to the truth (Matt.21:33-46; 23:32; Jn.8:44; 14:31; 15:25; 18:37),
the record shows that Jesus had indeed brought man's iniquity, moral evil, mischief and twistedness (Heb.awon)

down upon his own head (Isa.53:5,6,10). In his bloodied flesh (Isa.52:14) and unjust punishment (Isa.53:12), he
would, by divine decree (Isa.53:10), declare an end to sin's dominion (Rom.8:3), bringing his enemies to repent
and believe in the One whom they had tried to discredit. He would put them right, just as it was written, By his
sufferings shall my servant make a reconciliation with God (Isa.53:11). Or as Peter wrote, By his wounds we
are healed (1 Pe.2:24), i.e. delivered from sin and the Law that condemns it (1 Jn.1:7-9; 3:7; 1 Tim.1:9).
No punishment fell on the Brazen Serpent, which Jesus gave us to explain the Atonement (Jn.3:13-15). What the
Israelites gazed on was sin, the source of its power and its consequence (Nb..21:4-9). Hence, Jesus was not
bearing retributive punishment, but showing us what human rebellion looks like. It is virtual Deicide.
When the EMW use the word substitutionary in Article (c), are they suggesting that Jesus is himself the serpent,
whose head he would paradoxically crush according to the prophesy (Gen.3:15)? In so far as the Atonement is
substitutionary, we should say that substitution is involved in what happens when someone places himself under
another's burden. This is confirmed by the narrative of the Gospels Jesus' sympathy for the woman caught in
adultery etc. From love and sympathy for the guilty, He made their lot, as the collective condemned, His own
(Ga.3:13), eventually suffering shame with them (Isa.53:12), for them (Heb.13:11-14), but crucially at their own
hands (1 Pe.2:24 with vv.21-23).
This is why the earlier commandment was abolished, because it was neither effective or useful (Heb. 7:18). The
sacrifical system could not annul sin people would make their propitiatory offering and then go back to their old
ways (Heb.10:1-10). The whole ceremonial system needed scrapping. This is why the Mass, where people
imagine they are cleansed from the defiling effects of sin by magic, is so incongruous with the Gospel age. It
revives the old system of dead works in trying to please God with magic tricks. Putting oneself under the
cleansing blood of Christ can only mean a synergistic redemption in which we live our lives in the light, as He is
in the light, to walk more closely with God (1 Jn.1:7). How is this achieved? Well, if we acknowledge our sins,
then God who is faithful and just will forgive properly release () our sins and purify us from all wrongdoing (v.9). By annulling the propensity to commit sins, Jesus deprives sin of its guilt, force and power
(Heb.9:26). In this way he crushed the Serpent's head, and we are healed of its deadly bite. It was the Serpent who
bit Christ's heel, not God (Gen.3:15) and so it was upon the Serpent that he exacted his revenge. It was not the
death, but the life Jesus lived that made that death efficacious in removing sin. Christ was lifted up, not the cross!
Christ bore sin to bear it away. In the example, Behold, the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world,
Strongs NT266's entry (mentioned before) for (removal of sins) states: the expression in
Greek is or , ( = remove), in which the word, hamartia does not of
itself denote the guilt or penalty of sins, but the sins are conceived of as removed, so to speak, from God's sight,
regarded by him as not having been done, and therefore are not punished.
But while the removal of sins does not equate to the removal of punishment, so much as God's gracious pardon,
there is an obvious equivalence between the removal of sins and sanctification, as in Paul's exhortation: cleanse
yourselves from all filthiness of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God (2 Co.7:1). When
(remission) is used in this sense, the spatial relation between sin and the sinner, implied by the preposition, (away from), should be expressed.
However, there is a school of thought that would not recognize the spatial relation:
The forgiveness of sins and the consequent remission of punishment rest directly on the vicarious satisfaction or
passive obedience of Christ (R.A. Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms, pp.162-163
The idea of remitting punishment in penal atonement creates such biased translations as redemption through His
blood, the forgiveness of our sins (Eph.1:7; Col.1:14). Paul, as we know, regarded Christ's Lordship and ownership as central to the understanding of redemption (Rom.6:18). Here he uses an appositional construction to
emphasize the efficacy of the shed blood to deliver believers from sin. By juxtaposing redemption and ,
he makes the second expression identify, expand on and supplement the first (a corresponding example might be
The play by Shakespeare, Hamlet). Since redemption means setting free, should be translated removal
to modify the sense along the lines of our being delivered from sinning by the shed blood (Mat.12:29). But in no
way are remission of sins and emancipation from bondage explanatory equivalents. Forgiveness cannot possibly
define redemption. The conventional translation of Eph.1:7 and Col.1:14 preserves an obvious incongruity.
Whatever the sacrifices meant under the Levitical system, they did not appease God by offering penal satisfaction,
but had moral elements from the start that prefigured the Gospel. There is certainly no basis for saying that the old

sacrifices stood for the substitution of the innocent for the guilty in punishment, since, in the context of the first
Passover (when I see the blood I will pass over you, Ex.12:13) and the ram substituted for Isaac (Gen.22:11-14),
neither Israel nor Isaac were under judgment. Also, the fact that no offerings were accepted in atonement for
capital sins (Num.15:30) and non-animal sacrifices were acceptable, also discredits the idea of a substituted death.
Why did Jesus support the prevailing idea that the sacrifices were gifts (Mat.5:23)? Because blood was deemed to
be the seat of life and sacred (Lev.10:17; 17:11). As such, it had become the vehicle for drawing near to God, the
holy source of that life, in worship and contrition.
Why did God graciously accept blood as a covering for sin? Because, being costly to shed, it was the most ethical
means of confessing and attesting to sin's heinousness. God accepted the offerer in his offering not because it took
the place of a penalty, but because it emphasized the reality and guilt of sin and kept the sense of God's
displeasure towards it before the people. Far from being penal, the sacrifices expressed moral truths about God's
gracious initiative in approaching the sinner in mercy and providing a way of reconciliation. In turn, the offerer
expressed his intention of obedience and his yearning to be delivered from sin. The sacrifices certainly did not
assume that God was hostile or needed placating like the pagan gods.
Now if I consider Jesus as a penal substitute, as the EMW Statement requires, I am not even correctly interpreting
the sacrifical system. This reveals a different meaning retrospectively from our vantage point than might have
been imagined by the faithless Israelite. As we consider Peter's message on the day of Pentecost (Ac.2:22-41), we
note that it betokens the same pre-emptive graciousness on God's part to receive penitents as the Levitical system,
the same objective of eliciting confession and restoring broken relations as God's earlier appointed means. The
difference is that there was more scope for putting away sin for good, since Jesus' sufferings and death were human
(Rom.8:3), were endured voluntarily in the course of obeying His Father (Heb.10:7; Jn.14:31), and offered more
scope for the faith that justifies, since He rose from the dead and was full of grace and truth (Rom.4: 25; Heb.4:2;
Jn.1:16-18). So conscience replaces routine; the High Priest who offers Himself as the victim replaces the Priestly
Code and the sacerdotalism of liturgical Christianity; and true religion supercedes dead works and hypocrisy.
Penal satisfaction alone cannot remove sin or inspire true faith, if it is understood to have a purely forensic effect
and that effect is the object of faith. In that sense, the PST harks back to the old sacrifices, for these paid homage
to God's righteousness, but did not touch sin with the power and depth which attached to Christ's sacrifice
(Vincent on Rom. 3:25). Transferring guilt to Christ cannot solve the sin problem, for where sin remains, the
condemnation and eternal death due to it remains. Punishing the innocent in the sinner's place is ethically
impossible, as only the guilty can properly be punished. It is theologically impossible, since a spotless Lamb
cannot, by definition, have sin imputed to it, or grant access to God. If God poured out His wrath on His Son,
Jesus cannot be sufficient in Himself to atone, and we make sin, as the occasion of wrath, the means of its own
removal. That is like saying that impurity purges impurity.
I do not need Calvin's legalistic system to explain why my sin is not imputed to me. I know how God deals with it.
He forgives my iniquity at great personal cost, the cost of His Son's absorbing into Himself the whole treacherous,
lethal package (nature and guilt) from the world (Jn.8:42-59; 15:18-25). He did this to spur and sustain my
repentance and faith, His Spirit enabling me to break its power and carry it away, like the Scapegoat and the High
Priest (Lev.16:20-22; Jn.1:29; Rom.5:9; Heb.9:28; 10:16-18). In this way, Salvation is by grace and not by
human merit [Article (f)].
___________________________________________________________________________________________

Inspired verses that challenge man's theory of salvation by penal substitutionary atonement
(1) The wages of sin is death (Rom.6:23)
God does not categorize sins Anselmically, as debts to be paid vicariously, but as acts of obstinate and perverse
self-will, the meaning of awon, of which Jesus bore the brunt according to Isa.53:6. While wilful sin brings eternal
death, the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus (Rom.6:23). He took our awon in order to remove it. Paul's
declaration no longer lets us take God's loving mercy for granted, as before when sins were overlooked
(Rom.3:25); hence,
(2) Once for all time, he has appeared at the end of the age, to remove sin by his own death as a sacrifice
(Heb.9:28).
Luther's motto, Sin as you like, provided you believe invites Christians to commit the sin unto death (1
Jn.5:16), to crucify their Saviour afresh (Heb.6:4-6). Such presumption carries the real danger of death. But

anyone who sins defiantly blasphemes the LORD and must be cut off from the people of Israel (Num.15:30)
For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for
sins, but a certain fearful expectation of judgment, and fiery indignation which will devour the adversaries.
(Heb.10:26-27).
But hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured out into our hearts, through the Holy
Spirit who has been given to us (Rom.5:5). For God has not called us for the purpose of impurity, but in
sanctification. So he who rejects this is not rejecting man but God who gives his Holy Spirit to you (1 Thess.4:7,8)
Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to present you faultless... (Jude 24)
(3) Whoever scorns instruction will pay for it (Pro.13:13) This is why Christ warned his hearers,...
You can enter God's kingdom only through the narrow gate. The highway to hell is broad and its gate is wide for
the many who choose that way. But the gateway to life is very narrow and the road is difficult and only a few ever
find it Mat.7:13,14, NLT). And a highway will be there; it will be called the Way of Holiness (Isa.35:8)
Why, come out from among them and be you separate, said the LORD (2 Co.6:17)
And they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections (Ga.5:24)
(4) Vicarious punishment is false to the scriptures:
Then hear from heaven and act. Judge between your servants, condemning the guilty by bringing down on their
heads what they have done, and vindicating the innocent by treating them in accordance with their innocence. (1
Ki.8:32)
The one who sins is the one who will die... The righteousness of the righteous will be credited to them, and the
wickedness of the wicked will be charged against them. The person who sins will die. The son will not bear the
punishment for the father's iniquity, nor will the father bear the punishment for the son's iniquity; the righteousness
of the righteous will be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked will be upon himself. ( Ezk.18:18-20)
(5) Of course, any sin can be forgiven if it is sincerely repented of...
"If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (I
Jn.1:9).
(6) Conversely, any sin can lead to eternal death if it is not repented of, but allowed to continue in a person's life:
Because they have despised the LORD's word and broken his commands, they must surely be cut off; their guilt
remains on them.'" (Nb.15:31)
The man who infringes even one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be
considered the least in the kingdom of heaven (Mat.5:19).
For the Son of Man will judge all people according to their deeds (Mat.16:27).

Appendix 1: The Church's Debt to Heretics

The Reformers kept many of the heathenish doctrines and traditions that they inherited from Rome. Of these the
most eisegeted and contradictory to the message of Scripture is the idea that an angry God needed placating the
dogma of Propitiation, implied by the words oblation and satisfaction in the EMW creed. The seed of
Penitentialist super-stition, once sown in the Mass by Cyprian's presumption that vicarious suffering earned merit
with (made satisfaction to) God, directed the thinking of Eusebius, Chrysostom and Athanasius into propitiatory
channels, until it was adopted by Calvin and Luther fully formed from Augustine's and Anselm's theologies
respectively. The Protestant historian, Dr R.M. Jones (The Church's Debt to Heretics, p.228) confirms how the
Reformers, when they came out of Rome, brought most of the paganized teachings and traditions of the apostates
with them: (Luther) started out to inaugurate a Church composed of those who had faith and a spiritual vision,
and who revealed an ability and power to proclaim the word of God. But, in reality, he left in full operation a
large relic of ancient creeds, an extensive 'rump' of superstition, tradition and magic, and a heavy inheritance of
external authority. The Church's debt to heretics is the subject of this Appendix.
The findings of the Council of Trent confirm the Propitiatory Atonement as theirs:
"And forasmuch as, in this divine sacrifice which is celebrated in the mass, that same Christ is contained and
immolated in an unbloody manner, who once offered Himself in a bloody manner on the altar of the cross; the
holy Synod teaches that this sacrifice is truly propitiatory, and that by means thereof this is effected that we obtain
mercy, and find grace in seasonable aid, if we draw nigh unto God, contrite and penitent, with a sincere heart and
upright faith, with fear and reverence. For the Lord, appeased by the oblation thereof, and granting the grace and
gift of penitence, forgives even heinous crimes and sins" (The Infallible Roman Catholic Pope, Pius IV, Giovan
Angelo De Medici, [Friday, December 25, 1559 - Thursday, December 9, 1565], with the Infallible Dogmatic
Roman Catholic Council of Trent, Session 22, Monday, September 17, 1562, On the Sacrifice of the Mass,

Chapter 2).
The Victim is one and the same, the same now offering by the ministry of Priests. Who then
offered Himself on the cross, the manner alone of offering being different... The fruits indeed of
which oblation, of that bloody one to wit, are received most plentifully through this unbloody one; so far
is this (latter) from derogating in any way from that (former oblation). Wherefore, not only for the sins,
punishments, satisfactions and other necessities of the faithful who are living, but also for those who are
departed in Christ and who are not as yet fully purified, is it rightly offered, agreeable to a Tradition of the

Apostles" (The Infallible Roman Catholic Pope, Pius IV, Giovan Angelo De Medici, [Friday, December
25, 1559 - Thursday, December 9, 1565], with the Infallible Dogmatic Roman Catholic Council of Trent,
Session 22, Monday, September 17, 1562, On the Sacrifice of the Mass, Chapter 2; emphasis added).

Council of Trent [From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia]

The Council of Trent (Latin: Concilium Tridentinum) was an Ecumenical Council of the Catholic Church. It is
considered to be one of the Church's most important councils. It convened in Trento, Italy, then the capital of the
Prince-Bishopric of Trent of the Holy Roman Empire, between 13 December 1545, and 4 December 1563 in twentyfive sessions for three periods.
Canons and decrees
The greatest weight in the Council's decrees is given to the sacraments. The seven sacraments were reaffirmed and the
Eucharist pronounced to be a true propitiatory sacrifice as well as a sacrament, in which the bread and wine were
consecrated into the Eucharist (thirteenth and twenty-second sessions). The term transubstantiation was used by the
Council, but the specific Aristotelian explanation given by Scholasticism was not cited as dogmatic. Instead, the
decree states that Christ is "really, truly, substantially present" in the consecrated forms.

The Magisterial Reformers regarded themselves as a continuation of the historical

Roman Catholic Church, albeit under a different and purified form, being completely
united with it.
Martin Luther affirmed that he was essentially one with the Catholic Church:
No one can deny that we hold, believe, sing and confess all things in correspondence with the old church, that we
make nothing new therein nor add anything thereto, and in this way we belong to the old church and are one with
it (Lindsey, A History of the Reformation, Vol.I, p.468).
Referring to John Calvin, the respected G. P. Fisher declares:
He did not deny that the Christian societies acknowledging the Pope are 'churches of Christ'... He indignantly
denies that he has withdrawn from the Church (History of Christian Doctrine, p.304).
John Calvin even identified the historical Catholic Church as the mother of the Protestant reformers:

As our present design is to treat of the visible Church, we may learn even from her the title of mother, how useful
and even necessary it is to know her* (Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, Vol.VIII, p.450). *Pic

shows the trial of Servetus by the Catholic Inquisition, to whom Calvin handed him over to be burned at the stake

Michael Servetus (from Wikipedia): Unitarian scholar Earl Morse Wilbur states, "Servetus' Errors of the Trinity
is hardly heretical in intent, rather is suffused with passionate earnestness, warm piety, an ardent reverence for
Scripture, and a love for Christ so mystical and overpowering that [he] can hardly find words to express it ...
Servetus asserted that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit were dispositions of God, and not separate and distinct
beings." Wilbur promotes the idea that Servetus was a modalist.
Servetus states his view clearly in the preamble to Restoration of Christianity (1553): "There is nothing greater,
reader, than to recognize that God has been manifested as substance, and that His divine nature has been truly
communicated. We shall clearly apprehend the manifestation of God through the Word and his communication
through the Spirit, both of them substantially in Christ alone." This theology, though original in some respects, has
often been compared to Adoptionism, Arianism, and Sabellianism, all of which Trinitarians rejected in favour of
the belief that God exists eternally in three distinct persons. Nevertheless, Servetus rejected these theologies in his
books: Adoptionism, because it denied Jesus's divinity; Arianism, because it multiplied the hypostases and
established a rank; and Sabellianism, because, at first glance, it seemingly confused the Father with the Son.

Appendix 2: The Scapegoat is not Christ, but Satan

Source: Sighted Moon.com

Prove All Things

The Two Goats Yahshua and Satan

Lev 16: 7 And he shall take the two goats and let them stand before at the door of the Tent of Meeting. 8
And Aharon shall cast lots for the two goats, one lot for and the other lot for Azazel.

The reason lots are cast is because we cannot of our own tell which goat is Satan and which is Yahshua.
Revelation 12: 9 So the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan, who deceives
the whole world; he was cast to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.
So many now follow a paganised Jesus they no longer know what the truths of the scriptures are.
Lev 16: 9 And Aharon shall bring the goat on which the lot for fell, and shall prepare it as a sin offering.
John 1: 29 On the next day Yohanan saw coming toward him, and said, See, the Lamb of Elohim who
takes away the sin of the world!
1John 3: 4 Everyone doing sin also does lawlessness, and sin is lawlessness. 5 And you know that He was
manifested to take away our sins, and in Him there is no sin. 6 Everyone staying in Him does not sin. Everyone
sinning has neither seen Him nor known Him.1 Footnote: 1See 2:4 & 3 John v. 11. 7 Little children, let no one
lead you astray. The one doing righteousness is righteous, even as He is righteous.1 Footnote: 1See 2:29. 8 The
one doing sin is of the devil, because the devil has sinned from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of Elohim
was manifested: to destroy the works of the devil.
Lev 4: 35 Then he removes all its fat, as the fat of the lamb is removed from the slaughtering of the peace
offering. And the priest shall burn it on the altar, according to the offerings made by fire to . So the priest
shall make atonement for his sin that he has sinned, and it shall be forgiven him.
Lev 5: 5 And it shall be, when he is guilty of one of these, that he shall confess that in which he has sinned, 6 and
shall bring his guilt offering to for his sin which he has sinned, a female from the flock, a lamb or a female
goat as a sin offering. And the priest shall make atonement for him, for his sin.
Lev 12: 21 And Mosheh called for all the elders of Yisral and said to them, Go out and take lambs for
yourselves according to your clans, and slaughter the Passover lamb. 22 And you shall take a bunch of hyssop,
and dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and strike the lintel and the two doorposts with the blood that is in the
basin, and you, none of you shall go out of the door of his house until morning. 23 And shall pass on to
smite the Mitsrites, and shall see the blood on the lintel and on the two doorposts, and shall pass over the
door and not allow the destroyer to come into your houses to smite you.

Lev 16: 10 But the goat on which the lot for Azazel fell is caused to stand alive before , to make atonement
upon it, to send it into the wilderness to Azazel.
Lev 16:20 And when he has finished atoning for the Set-apart Place, and the Tent of Meeting, and the altar, he
shall bring the live goat. 21 Then Aharon shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat, and shall confess
over it all the crookednesses of the children of Yisral, and all their transgressions in all their sins, and shall put
them on the head of the goat, and shall send it away into the wilderness by the hand of a fit man. 22 And the goat
shall bear on itself all their crookednesses, to a land cut off. Thus he shall send the goat away into the wilderness.
This fit man spoken of in verse 21 is representing the angel that is coming down in Revelation to seize hold of
Satan and his demons.
Revelation 20: 1 And I saw a messenger coming down from the heaven, having the key to the pit of the deep and a
great chain in his hand. 2 And he seized the dragon, the serpent of old, who is the Devil and Satan, and bound him
for a thousand years, 3 and he threw him into the pit of the deep, and shut him up, and set a seal on him, so that he
should lead the nations no more astray until the thousand years were ended. And after that he has to be released
for a little while.

Upon The goat for Azazel is laid all the sins of Israel which Satan has caused to come about. In Revelation 18 and
19 this is what is happening here. We are being told who the culprit is that has brought about all this misery. Satan.
Revelation 19: 19 And I saw the beast, and the sovereigns of the earth, and their armies, gathered together to fight
Him who sat on the horse and His army. 20 And the beast was seized, and with him the false prophet who worked
signs in his presence, by which he led astray those who received the mark of the beast and those who worshipped
his image. The two were thrown alive into the lake of fire burning with sulphur. 21 And the rest were killed with
the sword which came from the mouth of Him who sat on the horse, and all the birds were filled with their flesh.
Revelation 18: 1 And after this I saw another messenger coming down from the heaven, having great authority,
and the earth was lightened from his esteem. 2 And he cried with a mighty voice, saying, Babel the great is
fallen, is fallen, and has become a dwelling place of demons, a haunt for every unclean spirit, and a haunt for
every unclean and hated bird, 3 because all the nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her whoring, and
the sovereigns of the earth have committed whoring with her, and the merchants of the earth have become rich
through the power of her riotous living. 4 And I heard another voice from the heaven saying, Come out of her,
my people, lest you share in her sins, and lest you receive of her plagues.1 Footnote: 1Jer. 51:6 & 45. 5 Because
her sins have piled up to reach the heaven, and Elohim has remembered her unrighteousnesses. 6 Render to her
as she indeed did render, and repay her double according to her works. In the cup which she has mixed, mix for
her double. 7 As much as she esteemed herself and lived riotously, so much torture and grief give to her, because
in her heart she says, I sit as sovereigness, and I am not a widow, and I do not see mourning at all. 8 Because of
this her plagues shall come in one day: death and mourning and scarcity of food. And she shall be burned up with
fire, because Elohim who judges her is mighty. 9 And the sovereigns of the earth who committed whoring
and lived riotously with her shall weep and mourn over her, when they see the smoke of her burning, 10 standing
at a distance for fear of her torture, saying, Woe! Woe, the great city Babel, the mighty city, because your
judgment has come in one hour!
It is by the blood of Yahshua the lamb that is killed at Passover that our sins are atoned for. It is by His blood that
we are redeemed.
Lev 16:15 And he shall slaughter the goat of the sin offering, which is for the people, and shall bring its blood
inside the veil, and shall do with that blood as he did with the blood of the bull, and sprinkle it on the lid of
atonement and in front of the lid of atonement. 16 And he shall make atonement for the Set-apart Place, because
of the uncleanness of the children of Yisral, and because of their transgressions in all their sins. And so he does
for the Tent of Meeting which is dwelling with them in the midst of their uncleanness. 17 And no man should be
in the Tent of Meeting when he goes in to make atonement in the Set-apart Place, until he comes out. And he shall
make atonement for himself, and for his household, and for all the assembly of Yisral. 18 And he shall go out
to the altar that is before , and make atonement for it. And he shall take some of the blood of the bull and
some of the blood of the goat, and put it on the horns of the altar all around. 19 And he shall sprinkle some of the
blood on it with his finger seven times, and cleanse it, and set it apart from the uncleanness of the children of
Yisral.
Having touched the unclean goat both Aaron and the fit man must clean themselves.
Lev 16: 23 Aharon shall then come into the Tent of Meeting, and shall take off the linen garments which he put
on when he went into the Set-apart Place, and shall leave them there. 24 And he shall bathe his body in water in
the set-apart place,
26 And he who sent away the goat to Azazel washes his garments, and shall bathe his body in water, and
afterward he comes into the camp.
Yahshua cannot be the Azazel Goat as some claim. This Azazel Goat read on.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azazel
Azazel or Azzl (Hebrew: , Azazel, Aramaic: ,[citation needed]) is a term used three times in the
Hebrew scriptures, and later in Hebrew mythology as the enigmatic name of a character.
The term in the Bible is limited to three uses in Leviticus 16, where a goat is designated la-azazeyl; either for
absolute removal or for Azazel and outcast in the desert as part of Yom Kippur.
Later Azazel was considered by some Jewish sources to be a supernatural being mentioned in connection with the
ritual of the Day of Atonement (Lev. xvi.). After Satan, for whom he was in some degree a prototype, Azazel
enjoys the distinction of being the most mysterious extrahuman character in Jewish sacred literature
The BrownDriverBriggs Hebrew Lexicon[1] gives Azazel as a reduplicative intensive of the stem azel

remove, hence azazel, entire removal. This is supported by the Jewish Greek Bible translation as the sender
away. Gesenius in his Hebrew lexicon confers with this.[2]
According to some Rabbinic interpretatins Azazel is a theophoric name, combined of the words Azaz (rugged)
and El (power/strong/of God) in reference to the rugged and strong rocks of the deserts in Judea. According to
Talmudic interpretation, the term Azazel designated a rugged mountain or precipice in the wilderness from
which the goat was thrown down, using for it as an alternative the word o (Yoma vi. 4). An etymology is
found to suit this interpretation. Azazel is regarded as a compound of az, strong or rough, and el, mighty,
therefore a strong mountain. This derivation is presented by a Baraita, cited Yoma 67b, that Azazel was the
strongest of mountains.[3]
The Jewish Encyclopedia (1910) contains the following entry:
The Rabbis, interpreting Azazel as Azaz (rugged), and el (strong), refer it to the rugged and rough mountain
cliff from which the scapegoat was cast down on Yom Kippur when the Jewish Temples in Jerusalem stood.
(Yoma 67b; Sifra, Ahare, ii. 2; Targum Jerusalem Lev. xiv. 10, and most medieval commentators). Most modern
scholars, after having for some time endorsed the old view, have accepted the opinion mysteriously hinted at by
Ibn Ezra and expressly stated by Nachmanides to Lev. xvi. 8, that Azazel belongs to the class of seirim, goatlike spirits, jinn haunting the desert, to which the Israelites were accustomed to offering sacrifice. (Compare the
roes and the hinds, Cant. ii. 7, iii. 5, by which Sulamith administers an oath to the daughters of Jerusalem. The
critics were probably thinking of a Roman faun.)[4]
Pre-Jewish sources
Despite the expectation of Brandt (1889)[16] to date no evidence has surfaced of Azazel as a demon or god prior
to the earliest Jewish sources among the Dead Sea Scrolls.Brandt, Mandische Theologie,
[edit] Dead Sea Scrolls and 1 Enoch
In the Dead Sea Scrolls the name Azazel occurs in the line 6 of 4Q203, the Book of the Giants. This is a part of
the Enochic literature about fallen angels found at Qumran.[17]
According to the Book of Enoch, which brings Azazel into connection with the Biblical story of the fall of the
angels, located on Mount Hermon, a gathering-place of demons from of old (Enoch xiii.; compare Brandt,
Mandische Theologie, 1889, p. 38). Azazel is represented in the Book of Enoch as one of the leaders of the
rebellious Watchers in the time preceding the flood; he taught men the art of warfare, of making swords, knives,
shields, and coats of mail, and women the art of deception by ornamenting the body, dying the hair, and painting
the face and the eyebrows, and also revealed to the people the secrets of witchcraft and corrupted their manners,
leading them into wickedness and impurity; until at last he was, at the Lords command, bound hand and foot by
the archangel Raphael and chained to the rough and jagged rocks of [Ha] Duduael (= Beth adudo), where he is
to abide in utter darkness until the great Day of Judgment, when he will be cast into the fire to be consumed
forever (Enoch viii. 1, ix. 6, x. 4-6, liv. 5, lxxxviii. 1; see Geiger, Jd. Zeit. 1864, pp. 196204).
The whole earth has been corrupted through the works that were taught by Azazel: to him ascribe all sin.
1 Enoch 10:8
According to 1 Enoch (a book of the Apocrypha), Azazel (here spelled zzyl) was one of the chief Grigori, a
group of fallen angels who married women. This same story (without any mention of Azazel) is told in Genesis
6:2-4:
That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they
chose. [] There were giants in the earth in those days; and also afterward, when the sons of God came in unto
the daughters of men, and they bore children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of
renown.
1 Enoch portrays Azazel as responsible for teaching people to make weapons and cosmetics, for which he was
cast out of heaven. 1 Enoch 8:1-3a reads:
And Azazel taught men to make swords and knives and shields and breastplates; and made known to them the
metals [of the earth] and the art of working them; and bracelets and ornaments; and the use of antimony and the
beautifying of the eyelids; and all kinds of costly stones and all colouring tinctures. And there arose much
godlessness, and they committed fornication, and they were led astray and became corrupt in all their ways.
The corruption brought on by Azazel and the Grigori degrades the human race, and the four archangels (Michael,
Gabriel, Raphael, and Uriel) saw much blood being shed upon the earth and all lawlessness being wrought upon
the earth [] The souls of men [made] their suit, saying, Bring our cause before the Most High; [] Thou seest

what Azazel hath done, who hath taught all unrighteousness on earth and revealed the eternal secrets which were
in heaven, which men were striving to learn.
God sees the sin brought about by Azazel and has Raphael bind Azazel hand and foot and cast him into the
darkness: and make an opening in the desert which is in Dudael and cast him therein. And place upon him
rough and jagged rocks, and cover him with darkness, and let him abide there forever, and cover his face that he
may not see light.
Several scholars have previously discerned that some details of Azazels punishment are reminiscent of the
scapegoat ritual. Thus, Lester Grabbe points to a number of parallels between the Azazel narrative in 1 Enoch and
the wording of Leviticus 16, including the similarity of the names Asael and Azazel; the punishment in the
desert; the placing of sin on Asael/Azazel; the resultant healing of the land. [18] Daniel Stkl also observes that
the punishment of the demon resembles the treatment of the goat in aspects of geography, action, time and
purpose. .[19] Thus, the place of Asaels punishment designated in 1 Enoch as Dudael is reminiscent of the
rabbinic terminology used for the designation of the ravine of the scapegoat in later rabbinic interpretations of the
Yom Kippur ritual. Stkl remarks that the name of place of judgment (Dudael) is conspicuously similar in both
traditions and can likely be traced to a common origin.[20]
Azazels fate is foretold near the end of 1 Enoch 2:8, where God says, On the day of the great judgement he shall
be cast into the fire. [] The whole earth has been corrupted through the works that were taught by Azazel: to
him ascribe all sin.
In the 5th Century 3 Enoch, Azazel is one of the three angels (Azza [Shemhazai] and Uzza [Ouza] are the other
two) who opposed Enochs high rank when he became the angel Metatron. Whilst they were fallen at this time
they were still in Heaven, but Metatron held a dislike for them, and had them cast out. They were thenceforth
known as the three who got the most blame for their involvement in the fall of the angels marrying women. It
should be remembered that Azazel and Shemhazai were said to be the leaders of the 200 fallen, and Uzza and
Shemhazai were tutelary guardian angels of Egypt with both Shemhazai and Azazel and were responsible for
teaching the secrets of heaven as well. The other angels dispersed to every corner of the Earth.

A depiction of Azazel in his familiar form, as a goat-like demon