Atonement penal substitution

THE DOCTRINE OF THE
ATONEMENT
LECTURE THREE:
PENAL SUBSTITUTION

Today:
Quiz over Schreiner (The Nature of the Atonement)
and Chapters 1-3 in (Justification: Five Views).
15 min. Presentations over Schreiner and Horton.
Penal Substitution + The Debates Surrounding
Justification.

Discussion:
Schreiner, Penal Substitution.
Introductory Chapters in Justification: Five Views.
Horton, Traditional Reformed view of Justification

Penal Substitution:
How Does Substitution differ from Satisfaction?
- Penal Satisfaction (Anselm): Focusses on
restoring God’s Honor by paying the Debt for sin.
- Penal Substitution: Focusses on assuaging God’s
Wrath by taking the Punishment for our sin.
Penal Substitution Explained: The punishment we
deserved was laid upon Jesus…thus the cross
displays God’s justice (punishing sin) and his love
(forgiving humans).

Penal Substitution: (In Church
History)
Martin Luther:

History)
Martin Luther:
- Luther celebrates multiple metaphors for Atonement
(especially Christus Victor)
- Among these is something close to Penal
Substitution

Martin Luther (On Gal. 3.13; LW 26:280)
When the merciful Father saw that we were being
oppressed through the Law, that we were being held
under a curse, and that we could not be liberated from
it by anything, He sent His Son into the world, heaped
all the sins of all men upon Him, and said to Him: "Be
Peter the denier; Paul the persecutor, blasphemer, and
assaulter; David the adulterer; the sinner who ate the
apple in Paradise; the thief on the cross. In short, be
the person of all men, the one who has committed the
sins of all men. And see to it that You pay and make
satisfaction for them."

History)
Martin Luther:
(especially Christus Victor).
- Among these, something close to Penal Sub.
John Calvin:
- Calvin adds an emphasis upon divine wrath.
Calvin gives what is likely the first fully developed articulation
of Penal Substitution.

John Calvin (Institutes, 2.15.6; 2.16.11)
God in his capacity as judge is angry toward us. Hence
as expiation must intervene in order that Christ as
priest may obtain God’s favor for us and appease his
wrath.
[Yet, lest we misunderstand…]
We do not, however, insinuate that God was ever
hostile to him or angry with him. How could he be
angry with his beloved Son, with whom his soul was
well pleased? Or how could he have appeased his
Father…if He were hostile to himself?

History)
Martin Luther:
(especially Christus Victor).
- Among these are Penal Satisfaction / Substitution.
John Calvin:
- Calvin adds an emphasis upon divine wrath.
- Christ appeases divine wrath, but the Father is
never “angry” at the Son per se.

History)
What happens between Anselm (11th c.) and
Luther/Calvin (16th c.) to bring about this shift
from Penal Satisfaction to Penal Substitution?
- “The Magna Carta” (1215)
‣A “Royal” Change - the Law looms larger, even
than the King.

THE MAGNA CARTA
“THERE ARE SOME THINGS EVEN KINGS CAN’T DO…”

History)
What happens between Anselm (11th c.) and
Luther/Calvin (16th c.) to bring about this shift
from Penal Satisfaction to Penal Substitution?
- “The Magna Carta” (1215)
‣A “Royal” Change - the Law looms larger…
‣Some versions of “satisfaction” might now appear
like trying to bribe a judge.
‣With Luther and Calvin, the Law looms very
large.

History)
John Owen:

JOHN OWEN
(1616 - 1683)
PURITAN THEOLOGIAN

History)
John Owen:
- Christ suffered the exact punishment that humanity
deserved.
- Uses analogy of commercial transaction.
- “For to make satisfaction to God for our sins, it is
required only that he undergo the punishment due
to them; for that is the satisfaction required where
sin is the debt.” (Works of John Owen, 10:266).

History)
Jonathan Edwards:

JONATHAN
EDWARDS
(1703-1758)
‘AMERICA’S GREATEST
THEOLOGIAN’

Jonathan Edwards:
(Satisfaction for Sin)
It is requisite that God should punish all sin with infinite
punishment; because all sin, as it is against God, is
infinitely heinous, and has infinite demerit…and so stirs
up infinite abhorrence and indignation in him.
Therefore, by what was before granted, it is requisite
that God should punish it, unless there be something in
some measure to balance this desert; either some
answerable repentance and sorrow for it, or some
other compensation.

JOHN WESLEY + CHARLES
WESLEY
(1703-1791) (1707-1788)

The Wesleys:
Guilty I stand before thy face
On me I feel thy wrath abide
’Tis just the sentence should take place
’Tis just - but Oh! thy Son hath died
For me I now believe he died
He made my every crime his own
Fully for me he satisfied
Father, well-pleased behold thy Son
Hymns for the Use of the People Called Methodists,
Written by Charles, edited by John

CHARLES
HODGE
(1797-1878)
PRINCETON
THEOLOGIAN
CONSERVATIVE
CALVINIST

Charles Hodge: (Systematic Theology)
God cannot pardon sin “without a satisfaction to justice,
and He cannot have fellowship with the unholy.” His
justice “demands the punishment of sin.”
“They were divine inflictions. It pleased the Lord to
bruise him. He was smitten of God and afflicted. These
sufferings were declared to be on account of sin, not
his own, but ours. …They had, therefore, all the
elements of punishment, and consequently it was in a
strict and proper sense that he was made a curse for
us.”

History)
Jonathan Edwards / The Wesleys:
Charles Hodge:
John MacArthur:
- “God was punishing his own Son as if He had
committed every wicked deed done by every sinner
who would ever believe.”
Mark Driscoll:
‣https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IPvV-hNY_4

Penal Substitution: (Critiques)
Greg Boyd: A Critique of Penal Substitution.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOE3hWRWrqc

Critiques of Penal Substitution:
1. Why must God punish in order to forgive?
- Faustus Socinus (1539-1604), Hugo Grotius
(1583-1645): If this is possible for Christians,
should not God be able to do so?
- Green and Baker:

BAKER /
GREEN
A CRITIQUE OF CERTAIN
PENAL SUBSTITUTION
MODELS.

- Socinus (1539-1604), Hugo Grotius (1583-1645):
If this is possible for Christians, should not God
be able to do so?
- Green and Baker: God’s ability to love is
limited by something outside God—an
abstract concept of “justice.”

- Key texts:
Romans 6.23: For the wages of sin is death…

- Key texts:
Romans 3.25: God presented Christ as a sacrifice of
atonement…He did this to demonstrate his righteousness,
because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed
beforehand unpunished— 26 he did it to demonstrate his
righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and
the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.

- In his justice, God determines to condemn evil.
- There is no forgiveness without “penalty”:
‣ Even to“forgive”(without retribution) is to
endure a kind of punishment; it is to take the
wrong inside oneself, and absorb the blow.
‣ God does this.

2. How does punishing the Innocent help the
Guilty- How is that just!?
- Abelard’s Critique—Would not the cross enflame
God’s wrath at humans all the more!?
- Key Text: 2 Cor. 5.21—
‣ T.F. Torrance on this text

2 Corinthians 5.21
“God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that
in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
T.F. Torrance:
We can only be aghast at this—nor have we any
adequate categories in which to construe it. But it is clear
that unless something like that did indeed happen, the
death of Christ as utterly substitutionary lacked reality or
actuality. How are we to understand that?
(Atonement, 126)

Guilty (And, How is that just!)? (3 Responses)
1.Christ freely lays down his life: The cross is
not forced upon a helpless victim.
2.God is Trinity: Father is not “doing something”
to Son; God is “doing something” for us.
3.Christ is the True Adam (Imago Dei)
(Torrance on the Vicarious Humanity of Christ).
Contra
Low
Christolog
y
Contra tri-
Theism
Contra Mod.
Individualism

T.F. Torrance (Atonement, 127.)
In the incarnation of the Word, Christ became the
‘proper man’ as Luther called him, the true man…[and]
because all mankind consist in him, he is the only one
who can really represent all men and women from the
innermost centre and depth of human being. He came
then, not only as the creator of our race, but as the
head of our race, for in him the whole race consists
(Col. 1.15-20).
It was thus that Christ, true God took upon himself our
flesh and became true man, and as such made
atonement.

T.F. Torrance (Atonement, 127.)
In the incarnation of the Word, Christ became the
‘proper man’ as Luther called him, the true man…[and]
because all mankind consist in him, he is the only one
who can really represent all men and women from the
innermost centre and depth of human being. He came
then, not only as the creator of our race, but as the
head of our race, for in him the whole race consists
(Col. 1.15-20).
It was thus that Christ, true God took upon himself our
flesh and became true man, and as such made
atonement.
Two Thoughts:
(1) The stress is more on “representation” than “propitiation
(2) This allows Christ’s entire life/death/resurrection to
function as “Atonement”

Guilty (And, How is that just!)? (3 Responses)
Christ is the True Adam (Imago Dei)
- Here, recapitulation provides the grounds for a
proper view of penal substitution—or rather
“representation”.

3. Does the the NT teach propitiation (i.e. that
God’s wrath must be vented/assuaged)?
- C.H. Dodd (1931): The means of atonement is
“expiation” (cancelation of sin), NOT “propitiation”
(diversion of God’s wrath).
‣ At issue: the proper translation of hilasterion
‣ “Wrath” for Dodd is merely the natural
consequence of sin (i.e. it is depersonalized)

- Leon Morris (more recently D.A. Carson,
Schreiner) argue in favor of Jesus as a
“propitiation.”
- Key Text (once again): Romans 3

Romans 3
25 God presented Christ as a sacrifice of
atonement,[hilasterion] through the shedding of his
blood—to be received by faith.
He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because
in his forbearance he had left the sins committed
beforehand unpunished— 26 he did it to demonstrate
his righteousness at the present time, so as to be [1]
just and [2] the one who justifies those who have
faith in Jesus.
The key may lie in examining how ‘sacrifice’ / ‘blood’ stands
in relation to ‘wrath’ elsewhere in the Bible (Read Schreiner,
81-82)

- Critics are right to caution against confusing
YHWH with an emotionally explosive pagan
Deity (see Ezek. 18.23).
“Have I any pleasure in the death of
the wicked, says the Lord God?”

- Critics are right to caution against confusing
YHWH with an emotionally explosive pagan
Deity (see Ezek. 18.23).
- Some (careless) Penal Substitution articulations
fail here.
- Yet…[Murray / Pippert quotes]

John Murray
It is one thing to say that the wrathful God is made
loving. That would be entirely false. It is another thing
to say the wrathful God is loving. That is profoundly
true.

Becky Pippert (Hope has its Reasons)
Think how we feel when we see someone we love
ravaged by unwise actions or relationships. Do we
respond with benign tolerance as we might toward
strangers? Far from it. . . . Anger isn’t the opposite of
love. Hate is, and the final form of hate is indifference.
God’s wrath is not a cranky explosion, but his settled
opposition to the cancer of sin which is eating out the
insides of the human race he loves with his whole
being.

- Conclusion: Much hangs on how we define
God’s wrath in distinction from (yet not total
opposition to) human anger.

4. Does this engender further abuse of the
“innocent” by sacralizing suffering / wrath?
- Beverly Harrison / Carter Heyward: Penal
Substitution “represents the sadomasochism of
Christian teaching at its most transparent.” God
plays the role of the sadist who willfully inflicts
punishment, and Jesus embraces the character
of the masochist who willingly suffers it.

- Darby Kathleen Ray: “Romantic visions of a
martyred Savior function in many cases to keep
victims of abuse in their death-dealing
situations…Jesus’ death becomes the example
of perfect self-sacrifice that believers ought to
emulate…and this kind of theological idealization
can perpetuate victimization.”

- A Response:
‣ Only if we disbelieve in the Trinity and the
Deity of Christ.
‣ Actually, history may show that the Christus
Victor view is more prone to produce
“conquest” and “violence” (e.g. Constantine)

4. It was largely absent for the first 1500 years of
Christian history.
- This is somewhat true, and it should caution us
against over-prioritizing the model.
- Yet this does not disprove the model, if the Bible
teaches it.
๏Sidebar: Why do you think Penal Substitution
ceased to be as powerful after, say, 1800?

4. It was largely absent for the first 1500 years of
Christian history.
๏Sidebar: Why do you think Penal Substitution
ceased to be as powerful after, say, 1800?
Steve Holmes, ‘The Wondrous Cross’
1. A move from the Age of Logic (Enlightenment) to the Age
of Feeling (Romanticism).
2. The destruction of a robust doctrine of sin/guilt/shame.

2. Why does punishing an innocent help the guilty
(how is that just!)?
3. Does the the NT teach propitiation (that God’s wrath
must be vented/assuaged)?
4. Does this engender further abuse of the “innocent”
by sacralizing suffering / wrath?
5. Largely missing for first 1500 years of the church.

Penal Substitution: (Positive
Proposal)
Scripture seems to require some form of Penal
Substitution:
- “Death” is the penalty for sin:
Romans 6.23: “the wages of sin is death”
Ezekiel 18.20: “the one who sins shall die”

Proposal)
Substitution:
- Israel’s sacrificial system involved some form of
substitution (reckoning sin to the sacrificial victim)
Lev. 16.21: He [Aaron] is to lay both hands on the
head of the live goat and confess over it all the
wickedness and rebellion of the Israelites—all their
sins—and put them on the goat’s head.

Proposal)
Substitution:
- Isaiah 53: Shows how the ‘Servant’ takes our
punishment, suffering, “iniquities”

Proposal)
Substitution:
- Isaiah 53:
4 Surely he took up our pain
and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
stricken by him, and afflicted.
5 But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
and by his wounds we are healed.

Proposal)
Substitution:
- Isaiah 53:
6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
each of us has turned to our own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.

Proposal)
Substitution:
- Galatians 3.13:
Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming
a curse for us
Bird’s Argument (‘Justification’, 137):
(1) Deut. 27.26 threatens curse to all who do not keep the Law.
(2) No one keeps the Law (thus all deserve curse).
(3) Yet (Gal. 3.13) Christ becomes a curse for us.

Proposal)
Substitution:
- Yet… we must not go beyond Scripture in over
“emotionalizing” / “anthropomorphizing” this reality.
Some Cautions regarding Penal Substitution
(from people who affirm it!)

Proposal)
- Hans Boersma (Violence, Hospitality, & the Cross)
1.Beware an overly “juridicized” articulation
• Too much emphasis upon balancing the scales
of punishment / justice.
• What Edward Irving called “The Stock
Exchange Deity”

Proposal)
2.Beware an overly “individualized” articulation
• Concerned only with individuals, and not with
systemic / structural problems.
• Christus Victor helps to balance this…

Proposal)
3.Beware a “de-historicized” articulation
• Importing too much of our cultural context (i.e.
justice is about punishing the guilty, satisfying
the honor of the feudal lord, etc…).

Proposal)
- Bruce McCormack (Emphasize Triune Unity):
“The proper meaning of “penal substitution” is that
the penalty that God as Judge willed to be the
consequence of human sin is a penalty that God
himself (the triune God in the person of the Son)
takes upon himself…The triune God pours his wrath
upon himself…he “drinks it to the dregs.” And in so
doing, vanquishes its power over us.”

Proposal)
- Kevin Vanhoozer (Guilt, Goats, and Gifts)
Place the emphasis on excess, not exchange.

Kevin Vanhoozer
The gift of Jesus’ death is itself excessive. No
economic or external constraint coerced God to give
himself for us. No economy mandates that God return
our evil with a greater good. In the final analysis, what
exceeds the confines of theory is nothing less than the
searing white heat of God’s holy love…God pours
himself out for us, not in an economic exchange, but in
an excess of justice and love. God did not merely
compensate for human sin; he did more. He did not
simply make up sin’s deficit; he destroyed it. The New
Testament, of coursel knows this “excess” by its proper
covenantal name: grace.

Penal Substitution:
Questions / Discussion:

Atonement penal substitution

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