In what sense is the curse upon the world of nature a punishment for sin? In the case of unsaved sinners, the curse upon nature is strictly and simply a punishment for sin. In the case of Christian people, the curse upon nature is not strictly a penalty for sin, for they have been delivered from that by Christ's atonement. Rather, in their case, the curse upon nature is to be regarded as a consequence of sin and a part of God's fatherly chastening or discipline by which he prepares us for the lice eternal.
In what sense is physical death itself a punishment for sin? Death is called "the wages of sin" (Rom. 6:23). Wages means "that which we have earned'' or "what we deserve." In the case of the unsaved person, death is simply the wages of sin, a judicial penalty. In the case of the Christian, however, Christ has already suffered death as his substitute. The Christian still has to die, of course, but in the case of the Christian, death is no longer a penalty. It remains an enemy, but it is not a Judicial penalty. Rather, to the Christian, death is a change by which God transfers him to the region and the condition of perfect holiness. Thus physical death, to the Christian, is part of God's fatherly discipline. It proceeds not from God's wrath, but from his love in the ease of the Christian.
Calvinism's problem does
not go away one iota with these statements.
"In the case of unsaved sinners, the curse upon nature is strictly and simply a punishment for sin."
Calvinism's inexorable problem, here, is that every
elect person, before he/she has been saved, has spent some period as an unsaved sinner--an
elect, unsaved sinner--and thus, will have, for the duration of that period, suffered, to some extent, that "punishment for sin" referred to by the Westminster divines. That is, every elect, unsaved sinner (just like the non-elect) will have been
punished, to some extent, for his/her sin. The Westminster divines clearly did not say "In the case of [non-elect, to the exclusion of all elect,] unsaved sinners...."
"The Christian still has to die, of course, but in the case of the Christian, death is no longer a penalty. It remains an enemy, but it is not a Judicial penalty."
One Calvinism-damning failure, here, is that the divines are flat-out
contradicting where they, in another place, have clearly stated that "death itself" is one of the "punishments of sin in this world...that befall US in OUR bodies", which is nothing but an unguarded admission that
they ("US"),
as Christians, suffer PUNISHMENT in
their ("OUR") bodies. Is the reader supposed to think that they meant that they suffer
punishment, while, somehow,
not suffering
penalty? Any divine who comes to a point where he has to appeal to his audience to just please bear with him while he (in, perhaps, some 500-page scholastic
excursus) endeavours to distinguish between
punishment, on the one hand, and
penalty, on the other, as though
one thing is signified by the one word, whereas
another thing, different from the former, is signified by the other--in such a case, any patient, reasonable hearer will, at that point (if no sooner) come rightly to suspect casuistry and imposture.
One may notice, also, that in the first sentence, the divines wrote the phrase, "a penalty", and in the second, they wrote, "a Judicial penalty". This makes me wonder whether they held that the class of all penalty is divisible into sub-classes:
Judicial penalty and
non-Judicial penalty. Or, did they consider all penalty to be Judicial, so that the word 'Judicial' in the phrase "Judicial penalty" is redundant, and does not really modify the word 'penalty'?
