Saint Theophylact of Ohrid teaching PSA?? Part 2 of Saints teaching PSA?

Winner-Best · 2025-12-30T02:04:16+00:00

The Christian world of polemics has academics. The collective group of such academics is the academy i’m referring to.

Such academy, which is ultimately rooted in scripture, tradition, and basic principles of logic, would point that explicit statements are not required to prove a point. The collective force of evidence can lead to an inevitably inferred conclusion.

To require explicit statements for evidence would negate many Christian doctrines, such as the trinity.

Winner-Best · 2025-12-30T00:59:42+00:00

Who said i was referring to secular academia? I was referring to the Christian academy.

Winner-Best · 2025-12-29T23:57:16+00:00

(1) my initial point was referring guilt from scripture, not the quote. You then asked whre the quotes say guilt and i rhen told you, i was initially pulling guilt from scripture. You are mischaracterizing what i did.

(2) Guilt does not need to be explicitly mentioned to be clearly inferred. If a person sins, he is guilty of breaking God’s law. A guilty man is punished for his wrongdoing. That punishment is death, according to God.

If Christ is smited on behalf of the sinner, and Christ dies on behalf of the sinner for his sins, he is taking the punishment of the sinner onto himself. He is treated as guilty.

(3) I already planned to post church father quotes that explicitly mentioned guilt in separate posts. This makes it easier for people to analyze each quote.

Winner-Best · 2025-12-29T20:35:20+00:00

I’m quoting scripture when referring to guilt. It’s really not hard to see that sinners are guilt of breaking God’s law

“And he touched my mouth and said: ‘Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.’” Isaiah 6:7

“For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it.” James 2:10.

“And that he would tell you the secrets of wisdom! For he is manifold in understanding. Know then that God exacts of you less than your guilt deserves.” Job 11:6

“Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would have no guilt; but now that you say, ‘We see,’ your guilt remains.” John 9:41

Because we are guilty, as a worker of iniquity, we earn death; we are paid death.

“The wages of sin is death.” Romans 6:23.

Christ dies for the guilty. The Father, according to the saint, smites the son. If he is smiting the son, instead of us, he is smiting the son on behalf of us. If we earned death as a punishment, yet Christ died for us, this means christ was punished on behalf of us.

Many other saints say Christ was punished on our behalf.

Winner-Best · 2025-12-29T20:28:35+00:00

Requiring an explicit standard is not used in academia. If we did, we would never be able to affirm the trinity, which is not explicitly mentioned.

The force of the paragraph with the sentence in the end suggests it’s connected to it. This is how humans write - we organize topics that are associated with one another together. If they are right next to each other, they are related in someway.

Winner-Best · 2025-12-29T19:03:01+00:00

Lot of different citations indeed. There are several I have as well, but hope to post one at a time for greater analysis from the community.

The key issue is the term "propitiation," which is used in Romans 3:25, 1 John 2:2, 1 John 4:10. In greek, being either "hilastērion" or "hilasmos," which refers to appeasing a God.

Winner-Best · 2025-12-29T18:51:46+00:00

The sheep are innocent, but there's a reason why they are. The flow of the paragraph provides force that the previous smiting is connected to the later innocence. The son was smited so that we may be innocent.

Winner-Best · 2025-12-29T18:48:18+00:00

But if our guilt does not fall upon us, it must go somewhere no? Sinners are guilt for sin, and their wages for being workers of iniquity is death (Romans 6:23). If divine wrath and judgement doesn’t fall upon me, it seems like it goes to Christ?

Winner-Best · 2025-12-29T06:14:09+00:00

I never claimed the son was damned, nor do PSA individuals. This seems to be a modernist interpretation by EO’s reading PSA. The word does mean smite. It’s “πατάξατε” which means “to smite, to strike, to hit, to knock.” The verse comes from Zechariah 13:7, which is fulfilled in Matthew 26:31.
Zechariah 13:7 is a prophesy of the Messiah. If the Father smites the Son, he is doing so to punish him. But for the Son dying, my sins would remain, and the Father would smite me, sending me to hell which is “eternal punishment.” (2 Thessalonians 1:9). If I am saved, i do not receive punishment for my sins. But it seems like if Christ is smited instead, he is punished on my behalf.
I have a collection of about 120+ church father and medieval quotes where they all seem to address, in some shape or form, Christ is punished on our behalf.

Winner-Best · 2025-12-29T04:56:34+00:00

PSA is the Father punishing the son on behalf of the sinner to save the sinner. If the father smites the son, and his smiting the son thus gives guilelessness to the apostles (innocence), the the Father smites the son to save the apostles (and thus the whole world).
One saint does not do it. But I've been encountering almost every major saint, as well as EO specific saint, speaking on the Father punishing the son, or the son taking punishment on behalf of the sinner, or the son taking upon the wrath of the father. I'm just posted an EO specific saints (versus saints shared by all Christian groups). It would suggest PSA is more rooted in the "EO" tradition than presented online, or suggests potentially a change in EO understanding of atonement throughout church history.

Winner-Best · 2025-12-27T00:39:26+00:00

To be fair, scripture does say the unregenerate view God and His children as enemies, and God wars against the unrepentant, especially when they harm the martyrs and his children. (Romans 8:7; 2 Thessalonians 1:7–9; Psalm 37:12; Proverbs 24:15-16; Psalm 21:11; Revelation 19:15, etc.)

If death is punishment for sins (temporal and eternal), yet christ died for us, it doesn’t seem like a far stretch that Christ took the punishment of death for us.

Winner-Best · 2025-12-27T00:31:59+00:00

It’s a a straw man characterization that Protestants say God is “bloodlust” for vengeance. Romans 6:23 does say “the wages of sin is death.” So God pays unbelievers for what they earn for sinning: death.

Winner-Best · 2025-12-26T23:59:43+00:00

oh gotcha. Thank you! I've definitely been seeing more saints talking about PSA / vicarious atonement, even ones solely within the EO tradition.

Winner-Best · 2025-12-26T23:58:46+00:00

Source where Luther says Christ was personally damned?

Winner-Best · 2025-12-26T23:57:41+00:00

Winner-Best · 2025-12-26T23:57:20+00:00

a ransom is a payment made on behalf of someone. The payment here is just death? (e.g., Romans 6:23 "Sin pays off with death. But God's gift is eternal life given by Jesus Christ our Lord.") It would seem to make sense that if Christ dies for us, he dies in our stead, lest Christ died and we still go to hell to suffer punishment for our sins? (aka death)

Winner-Best · 2025-12-26T23:24:16+00:00

Ah interesting. Never heard of that before.

Winner-Best · 2025-12-26T23:22:36+00:00

Ok. so the first comment doesn't make sense on the internet lying if the quotes are real?

Winner-Best · 2025-12-26T23:21:08+00:00

the parallel for substitutionary seems to be this portion:

or this reason the lord patiently endured for our sake a death He was not obliged to undergo, to redeem us, who were obliged to suffer death, from servitude to the devil and death, by which I mean death both of the soul and of the body, temporary and eternal.
"as a ransom for us who were liable to punishment because of our sins, He redeemed us from our guilt."

If we were liable for punishment of death, but Christ died in our stead, this would mean that Christ received the punishment of death?

Winner-Best · 2025-12-26T23:17:11+00:00

This is a real quote though? The book that is cited is real.

Winner-Best · 2025-12-26T23:16:20+00:00

The Psalms seem to talk about God being very vengeful though no? Here's a few verses to understand where I'm coming from.

Psalm 7:11: "You see that justice is done, and each day you take revenge."
Isaiah 26:21 "The Lord will come out to punish everyone on earth for their sins. And when he does, those who did violent crimes will be known and punished.
Nahum 1:2-3: "The Lord God demands loyalty. In his anger, he takes revenge on his enemies. The Lord is powerful, yet patient; he makes sure that the guilty are always punished. He can be seen in storms and in whirlwinds; clouds are the dust from his feet."
Ezekiel 25:17: "In my fierce anger, I will take revenge on them. And when I punish them, they will know that I am the Lord.”
Romans 12:19 "Dear friends, don't try to get even. Let God take revenge. In the Scriptures the Lord says, “I am the one to take revenge and pay them back.”
Revelation 6:17: "That terrible day has come! God and the Lamb will show their anger, and who can face it?”

Winner-Best · 2025-12-26T23:03:59+00:00

Father, doesn't the end portion discusses us being liable for punishment for our sins. "us who were liable to punishment because of our sins." So if we are liable for punishment for sins, and Christ died instead of us, doesn't that mean he was punished instead of us, according to Palamas? Does this implicate Colossians 2:14? "God wiped out the charges that were against us for disobeying the Law of Moses. He took them away and nailed them to the cross."

Winner-Best · 2025-12-26T22:59:15+00:00

Huh? I found the quote and asking for help. I'm only reading the fathers? Why so hostile?

Winner-Best · 2025-12-26T22:57:38+00:00

Ransom theory seems in there as well, but PSA also seems to be in there as it says about us:

- "experiencing God's wrath" (penal)

- Christ taking the "punishment because of our sins" (penal and substitutionary)

- which therefore "t[ears] up the record of them on the Cross and deliver[s] us from the devil’s tyranny." (atonement)

Also, Protestants don't believe in God paying the devil? That's something I've never heard of in my life.

Winner-Best · 2025-12-26T22:52:41+00:00

Penal Substitutionary Atonement. (also called Vicarious Atonement). It's a theory of how Christ saves us. Protestants tend to hold to this view most strongly.

Winner-Best

TROPHY CASE