You slipped in a comment regarding EGW's statement in your post to me, thanks:

the only plan of redemption revealed in Scripture, revealed for sinful man, requires the shedding of the blood of the Lamb of God for taking way sin and guilt by suffering our death penalty - which is being our propitiation by faith in his blood (Rom 3:25?). Is the redemption option for Lucifer before he declared war relevant to us? He sinned in God's face: there was no redemption offer made to him; an invitation isn't the same thing, as any lawyer or law graduate could tell you. And that invitation was before he declared war. That isn't our concern, nor would it feel comparable!

Also, the fire of hell was originally reserved only for fallen angels: any wicked humans who land there do indeed do so of their own accord, unnecessarily, due to Calvary!

My exclamation re Calvary is, in line with Rosangela's comments 'earlier' today, that, in light of Rom 3:22b-24 God condemned the sin of every man (Heb 2:9) in the body of his Son, the Saviour of the world, who died the second death to free us of that eternal condemnation rooted in our nature, he also having our burden of guilt ladled onto him in its fulness, which did kill him as well as separate him from his Father. If any reject that death as his own, since it is legally every man's under the everlasting covenant, he is without excuse.

The cause of death was directly our guilt; the availability of that death to us for salvation is based on God's covenant law by which we inherit Christ's merits, mind and character, by grace via our death in Christ and rebirth by his Spirit.

God doesn't treat the "sheep and the goats" differently in the judgement: then as today, the question isn't what sins have you committed, but what have you done with Jesus' life, death and resurrection for you, as you?

Jn 3 says that that is the basis of condemnation - unbelief in the Son of God.

You say Rosangela and I have "very different" views: you aren't trying to divide and conquer are you? - I know she and I differ on Christology, but not in this regard!

Your response is rather indirect. I'll try to interpret it, and you can tell me if my interpretation is correct.
You seem to be implicitly agreeing the points that I made, but don't think these points are important, for reasons exemplified by that fact that no one had systematized the doctrine of rbf until Luther, nor had the idea of an investigative judgment been taught until SDA pioneers did so. Is this correct?

“The view taken by Athanasius of the atoning work of Christ has two characteristic features: First, it is based upon the doctrine of the Trinity;—God only can reconcile man with God. Secondly, it rests on the idea of a debt which is paid, not to the devil, but to God. This debt is also due to death, who has a sort of right over Christ, like the right of the devil in the former scheme. If it be asked in what this view differs from that of Anselm, the answer seems to be, chiefly in the circumstance that it is stated with less distinctness."

http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_s...=html&Itemid=27

For this cause, then, death having gained upon men, and corruption abiding upon them, the race of man was perishing; the rational man made in God's image was disappearing, and the handiwork of God was in process of dissolution. 2. For death, as I said above, gained from that time forth a legal [212] hold over us, and it was impossible to evade the law, since it had been laid down by God because [213] of the transgression, and the result was in truth at once monstrous and unseemly. 3. For it were monstrous, firstly, that God, having spoken, should prove false--that, when once He had ordained that man, if he transgressed the commandment, should die the death, after the transgression man should not die, but God's word should be broken. For God would not be true, if, when He had said we should die, man died not. (The Treatise on the Incarnation, section 6)

None, then, could bestow incorruption, but He Who had made, none restore the likeness of God, save His Own Image, none quicken, but the Life, none teach, but the Word. And He, to pay our debt of death, must also die for us, and rise again as our first-fruits from the grave. Mortal therefore His Body must be; corruptible, His Body could not be. ...

2. But since it was necessary also that the debt owing from all should be paid again: for, as I have already said [254] , it was owing that all should die, for which especial cause, indeed, He came among us: to this intent, after the proofs of His Godhead from His works, He next offered up His sacrifice also on behalf of all, yielding His Temple to death in the stead of all, in order firstly to make men quit and free of their old trespass, and further to shew Himself more powerful even than death, displaying His own body incorruptible, as first-fruits of the resurrection of all. (Idem, section 20)

From: http://mb-soft.com/believe/txuc/athana26.htm

“Thou hast taken upon Thyself the common debt of all in order to pay it back to Thy Father - pay back also, O guiltless Lord, those sins with which our freedom has indebted us. Thou hast redeemed us from the curse of the law by Thy precious blood. Deliver also those redeemed by Thy blood from harsh justice!” (St. Ephrem the Syrian, *A Spiritual Psalter* #102)

There is also a great deal of language like this in the early Western Fathers: Cyprian, Ambrose, etc.

From: http://fatherstephen.wordpress.com/2008/01/22/st-gregory-the-theologian-on-our-ransom-by-god/

Satan had excited sympathy in his favor by representing that God had dealt unjustly with him in bestowing supreme honor upon Christ. Before he was sentenced to banishment from Heaven, his course was with convincing clearness shown to be wrong, and he was granted an opportunity to confess his sin, and submit to God's authority as just and righteous.(4SP 319)

The light shining from the cross reveals the love of God. His love is drawing us to Himself. If we do not resist this drawing, we shall be led to the foot of the cross in repentance for the sins that have crucified the Saviour. Then the Spirit of God through faith produces a new life in the soul. The thoughts and desires are brought into obedience to the will of Christ. The heart, the mind, are created anew in the image of Him who works in us to subdue all things to Himself. Then the law of God is written in the mind and heart, and we can say with Christ, "I delight to do Thy will, O my God." Ps. 40:8. (DA 176)

So I verified that this idea, contrarily to what is generally affirmed, was not inexistent among the church fathers.

How could Christ's death for sin and for us - to indeed save us from our own death penalty - be described as arbitrary (you say "imposed") and contrary to the law of God, which you aver is not arbitrary? Yes, how would a legal requirement for Christ's death be an "imposed" requirement?

(M)an was deceived; his mind was darkened by Satan's sophistry. The height and depth of the love of God he did not know. For him there was hope in a knowledge of God's love. By beholding His character he might be drawn back to God.(DA 762)

The chief idea that I've been arguing against is that God could not legally forgive us without the death of Christ. I haven't spoken of debts. The idea of debt is another matter.

Would you agree that before Calvin, no one spoke specifically of the idea of the death of Christ being necessary in order for God to legally pardon us? This is the point I've been making, and if you are aware of anyone who said this before Calvin, I'd certainly be interested in knowing this.

R: So I verified that this idea, contrarily to what is generally affirmed, was not inexistent among the church fathers.
T: I don't know what you have in mind in regards to the quotes you cited being against what is generally affirmed. What is it you think it generally affirmed?

We are told that Christ was killed for us, that His death has washed out our sins, and that by dying He disabled death itself. That is the formula. That is Christianity. That is what has to be believed. Any theories we build up as to how Christ's death did all this are, in my view, quite secondary: mere plans or diagrams to be left alone if they do not help us, and, even if they do help us, not to be confused with the thing itself. All the same, some of these theories are worth looking at.

The one most people have heard is the one about our being let off because Christ volunteered to bear a punishment instead of us. Now on the face of it that is a very silly theory. If God was prepared to let us off, why on earth did He not do so? And what possible point could there be in punishing an innocent person instead? None at all that I can see, if you are thinking of punishment in the police-court sense. On the other hand, if you think of a debt, there is plenty of point in a person who has some assets paying it on behalf of someone who has not. Or if you take "paying the penalty," not in the sense of being punished, but in the more general sense of "footing the bill," then, of course, it is a matter of common experience that, when one person has got himself into a hole, the trouble of getting him out usually falls on a kind friend.

Now what was the sort of "hole" man had gotten himself into? He had tried to set up on his own, to behave as if he belonged to himself. In other words, fallen man is not simply an imperfect creature who needs improvement: he is a rebel who must lay down his arms. Laying down your arms, surrendering, saying you are sorry, realising that you have been on the wrong track and getting ready to start life over again from the ground floor - that is the only way out of a "hole." This process of surrender - this movement full speed astern - is what Christians call repentance. Now repentance is no fun at all. It is something much harder than merely eating humble pie. It means unlearning all the self-conceit and self-will that we have been training ourselves into for thousands of years. It means undergoing a kind of death. In fact, it needs a good man to repent. And here's the catch. Only a bad person needs to repent: only a good person can repent perfectly. The worse you are the more you need it and the less you can do it. The only person who could do it perfectly would be a perfect person - and he would not need it.

Remember, this repentance, this willing submission to humiliation and a kind of death, is not something God demands of you before He will take you back and which He could let you off of if He chose: it is simply a description of what going back to Him is like. If you ask God to take you back without it, you are really asking Him to let you go back without going back. It cannot happen. Very well, then, we must go through with it. But the same badness which makes us need it, makes us unable to do it. Can we do it if God helps us? Yes, but what do we mean when we talk of God helping us? We mean God putting into us a bit of Himself, so to speak. He lends us a little of His reasoning powers and that is how we think: He puts a little of His love into us and that is how we love one another. When you teach a child writing, you hold its hand while it forms the letters: that is, it forms the letters because you are forming them. We love and reason because God loves and reasons and holds our hand while we do it. Now if we had not fallen, that would all be plain sailing. But unfortunately we now need God's help in order to do something which God, in His own nature, never does at all - to surrender, to suffer, to submit, to die. Nothing in God's nature corresponds to this process at all. So that the one road for which we now need God's leadership most of all is a road God, in His own nature, has never walked. God can share only what He has: this thing, in His own nature, He has not.

But supposing God became a man - suppose our human nature which can suffer and die was amalgamated with God's nature in one person - then that person could help us. He could surrender His will, and suffer and die, because He was man; and He could do it perfectly because He was God. You and I can go through this process only if God does it in us; but God can do it only if He becomes man. Our attempts at this dying will succeed only if we men share in God's dying, just as our thinking can succeed only because it is a drop out of the ocean of His intelligence: but we cannot share God's dying unless God dies; and he cannot die except by being a man. That is the sense in which He pays our debt, and suffers for us what He Himself need not suffer at all.(http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/mischedj/ca_lewisatone.html)