The New Testament speaks of the ongoing intercessory work of Christ before the Father and presents Christ as being a present atonement for sin as a result (e.g., Rom 8:34; Heb 2:17; 7:24-25; 8:1, 3; 1 John 2:1-2; Rev 5:5-6). The intercessory work of Christ is problematic to the Penal Substitution model of atonement. As Evangelical scholar, Darrin W. Snyder Belousek, in his excellent book, Atonement, Justice, and Peace: The message of the Cross and the Mission of the Church (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2012), p. 249 n. 13 wrote:
To understand the heavenly intercession of the Son on our behalf as the propitiation of the Father, as Michael does, generates a significant problem of internal coherence for penal substitution. According to penal substitution, the primary purpose and effect of the death of Jesus was to propitiate the wrath of God on account of the sins of humanity. As it is written elsewhere, because Christ is “a priest forever” in heaven, he “always lives to make intercession” and is thus “able for all time to save those who approach God through him” (Heb 7:24-25). Heavenly intercession on our behalf is thus the ongoing vocation of the risen and ascended Christ. So, if the purpose and effect of the Son's intercession is to propitiate the Father's wrath, then the Son is continually doing in heaven at the throne what was to have been fully accomplished on earth at the cross. The cross would thus seem to have been ineffective, or at least incomplete, in accomplishing its primary purpose of saving humanity from divine wrath. Michael's [a Reformed apologist the author is responding to] interpretation of 1 John 2:1-2, although given in defense of penal substitution, effectively undermines it.
Many proponents of Reformed soteriology have shown to be inconsistent with respect to their views on the nature of Christ’s atoning death its relationship to intercession, as well as the salutary nature of Christ’s intercession. James R. White, for instance, once wrote the following:
He enters into the presence of the Father, having obtained eternal redemption. Christ presents Himself before the Father as the perfect oblation in behalf of His people. His work of intercession, then, is based on His work of atonement. Intercession is not another or different kind of work, but is the presentation of the work of the cross before the Father . . . the Son intercedes for men before the Father on the basis of the fact that in His death He has taken away the sins of God’s people, and therefore, by presenting His finished work on Calvary before the Father, He assures the application of the benefits of His death to those for whom He intercedes. (James R. White, The Fatal Flaw, pp. 133-134).
Ulrich Zwingli, one of the magisterial Reformers, wrote the following on the intercessory work of Christ:
For as He [Christ] offered Himself once on the cross and again to the Father in heaven, so He won and obtained remission of sins and the joy of everlasting happiness. (The Latin Works of Huldreich Zwingli [trans. Macauley Jackson; 2 vols.], 2:276)
This inconsistency is also part-and-parcel of John Calvin’s soteriology as well as those who, like James White, subscribe to such a forensic model of atonement. In the book by Robert Peterson, Calvin and the Atonement, we read the following on the topic of Christ’s office of priest and work of intercession:
Salvation depends upon Christ’s highly priestly work of reconciliation . . . The second of Christ’s priestly duties is intercession. Because Jesus Christ has reconciled the Father to believers and them to him, he has opened for them a way of access to God in prayer. In the Institutes, Calvin explains that Christ’s accomplishment of reconciliation is the prerequisite for his work of intercession:
For having entered a sanctuary not made with hands, He appears before the Father’s face as our constant advocate and intercessor (Heb. 7:25; 9:11f.; Rom. 8:34). Thus He turns the Father’s eyes to His own righteousness to avert his gaze from our sins. He so reconciles the Father’s heart to us by His intercession that He prepares a way and access for us to the Father’s throne. He fills with grace and kindness the throne that for miserable sinners would otherwise have been filled with dread. (Institutes II.xvi.16)
In fact, according to Calvin’s commentary on 1 John 2:1, ‘Christ’s intercession is the continual application of His death to our salvation.’ Christ’s priestly work of reconciliation is once for all. But his high priestly function of intercession is continuous. He continually intercedes on behalf of his people before his Father’s throne. (Robert A. Peterson Sr., Calvin and the Atonement: What the renowned pastor and teacher said about the cross of Christ [Ross-Shire, UK: Mentor, 1999], 57-58)
On p. 58 n. 51 of ibid., we read the following:
Hoogland expresses this very well: ‘The intercession of Christ according to Calvin, is not an additional act which Christ performs in heaven, different from His death and resurrection. His intercession is the presence of His death and resurrection themselves before the Father’ (Marvin P. Hoogland, ‘Calvin’s Perspective on the Exaltation of Christ in Comparison with the Post-Reformation Doctrine of the Two States’, pp. 198f.)
As with James White (whose book was written, in part, against the Catholic doctrine of the Mass as a propitiatory sacrifice), Calvin contradicts himself when he critiques this doctrine, one that is tied into Christ’s intercessory work being salutary (showing the inconsistent nature of such a view of atonement):
It is in the context of the efficacy of Christ’s sacrifice that Calvin takes great affront at the Roman Catholic mass. In the Institutes, he explains:
The sacrificial victims which were offered under the law to atone for sins were so called, not because they were capable of recovering God’s favour or wiping out iniquity, but because they prefigured a true sacrifice such as was finally accomplished in reality by Christ alone; and by him alone, because no other could have done it. And it was done but once, because the effectiveness and force of that one sacrifice accomplished by Christ are eternal, as he testified with his own voice when he said that it was done and fulfilled; that is, whatever was necessary to recover the Father’s favour, to obtain forgiveness of sins, righteousness and salvation—all this was performed and completed by that unique sacrifice of his. And so perfect was is that no place was left afterward for any other sacrificial victim. Therefore, I conclude that it is a most wicked infamy and unbearable blasphemy, both against Christ and against the sacrifice which he made for us through his death on the cross, for anyone to suppose that by repeating the oblation he obtains pardon for sins, appeased God, and acquires righteousness. But what else is done by performing masses except by the merit of a new oblation we are made partakers in Christ’s passion? (Institutes IV.xviii.13-14) (ibid., 98-99)
Commenting on this aforementioned passage from Calvin’s Institutes, Peterson writes:
[In Calvin’s eyes] Christ’s work was perfect and no other sacrifices are needed. Christ perfectly fulfilled the Old Testament sacrificial system by offering himself on the cross. His work is sufficient to save his people from their sins. (Ibid., 99)
The Reformed doctrine of Christ’s atoning death and its relationship to His intercession is internally inconsistent and should be, as with the other tenets of Calvinism, rejected.
