• God cannot be just if He punishes one act of treason (sin) but fails to punish another treasonous act (another sin). In order for God to be a 'just' God He must punish every treason.

Anselm of Canterbury correctly reasoned that Christ's sinlessness was not 'meritorious' - that is, God was not obligated in any way to Christ on account of Christ's sinlessness (consider the parable of the worthless servant). Anselm further reasoned however, that there -was- merit in Christ's offering Himself for others, and that since Christ didn't need this merit, it could be passed on to others who did.

Hogo Gortius expanded this understanding in his "governmental model" - observing that by providing His own (God's the Father's own) sacrifice (that being Jesus Christ) God could be the justifier of fallen humanity while maintaining his own 'just' standing.

Men like John Calvin and John Miley honed the basic principles, highlighting the propitiatory nature of the atonement - that is, that God's wrath against sinners is just, and that Christ bore that wrath to satisfy this requirement - that is, we were justified when Christ bore our sins on the cross. The notion of merit evolved into grace - that is Christ death didn't produce merit, but was the channel for God's grace. Today we call this apology the "substitution" or "penal" or "punitive" model of the atonement.

In this 'model' God is the eternal and just judge and we are guilty. Our crime is high treason, and the punishment for this crime is eternal damnation.

Note: We reason that God is infinite, as such no sin that we commit grows dim in God's memory - but our treasons - every one of them, are eternally and ever before the fullness of God's awareness for all eternity - God can neither forget or ignore our sins, as His by his very nature He is 'condemned' as it were, to live in the continuing and eternal knowledge of our treason - never once growing weaker or dissipating as it might were God simply a temporal creature like ourselves.

Given then that God can never for one moment - throughout all eternity - forget even one treasonous act the only fitting and just punishment is an eternity in hell - let there be no squeamishness here, because God Himself deserves justice in the matter of our sin.
In the same way that Open Theism can be boiled down to a flagrant theology based solely on the rejection of predestination, likewise, this new model is a simply a rejection of God's justices.

There is no room it seems, in our post modern palsied culture, for absolute justice. God must be the God of our culture - and our culture rejects the notion not only of a just God, but also of the sinfulness of sin.