15. Conclusion

Our exploration of atonement and the death of Christ has yielded rich rewards. Simply acquiring a clearer understanding of the meaning of the English word “atonement” represents a major advance, which enables us to see the inadequacy of many contemporary theories of the atonement offered by Christian philosophers. For while their theories may offer an account of the atonement in the broad, etymological sense of the word, they have little to say, if anything, about atonement in the narrow, biblical sense of the word. But biblically speaking, atonement in the narrow sense (kippēr, hilaskesthai) is the means to atonement in the broad sense (katallagē). To borrow the terminology of our German colleagues, a theory of Versöhnung that does not have at its heart die Sühne is empty.

Since we have no conciliar guidance concerning the atonement, our theories of the atonement must be guided and assessed by biblical exegesis and philosophical analysis. Although we have distinguished between the doctrine of the atonement and a theory of the atonement, we should not be misled into thinking that the biblical doctrine of the atonement is the simple affirmation that “Christ died for our sins,” so that theory construction can proceed with little regard to biblical teaching. Rather, we have seen that the biblical doctrine of the atonement is a multifaceted doctrine replete with various motifs and metaphors and therefore capable of guiding us in finding acceptable theories of the atonement. Even the formulaic affirmation “Christ died for our sins” (1 Cor 15:3) is in all probability, as we have seen, a reference to the righteous Servant of the LORD of Isaiah 53, whose vicarious, punitive suffering makes many to be accounted righteous.

On the other hand, we want a theory of the atonement that is philosophically coherent and can therefore withstand the attacks of its critics. Contemporary theologians exhibit a disturbing tendency to shun accounts of the mechanism of atonement and to content themselves with mystery or metaphor. Such an approach to the atonement not only precludes our gaining insight into this important doctrine but leaves Christianity vulnerable to the attacks of its critics. We must therefore seek an account of the atonement that is both biblically adequate and philosophically coherent.

We have seen that the biblical doctrine of the atonement is like a multifaceted jewel with sacrifice as its table. Moreover, a study of sacrifice in OT Judaism reveals that the Levitical animal sacrifices, to which NT authors compare the death of Christ, were not, like the bloodless grain offerings, offered as gifts to God but rather served the twin functions of expiation of sins/impurity and propitiation of God. A death was prescribed, and through the hand-laying ritual, which accompanies every animal sacrifice, it is plausible that the offerer identifies himself symbolically with the animal, so that the animal dies in his place, suffering the fate that the worshipper deserved as the punishment for his sin. In the eyes of the NT authors, these sacrifices were an arrangement graciously given by God that were merely provisional in nature, an understanding of the sacrifices already intimated in the OT, until Christ should come and by his self-sacrificial death offer once for all a truly efficacious sacrifice for sin. Moreover, Christ’s death propitiated God’s wrath, which hung over mankind as the result of its condemnation before the bar of God’s justice.

The substitutionary, punitive nature of Christ’s death, already limned in the Levitical sacrifices, comes to the fore in the NT authors’ identification of Christ with Isaiah’s Servant of the LORD, who “bore our sins in his body on the tree” (1 Pet 2:24). The common Hebrew idiom of bearing sin/iniquity means to be liable to punishment or to endure punishment. This Christ did in our place and on our behalf.

By bearing the punishment of our sins, Christ satisfied the demands of divine justice. We have seen how replete the NT is with justice terminology and metaphors of the courtroom. Because Christ has borne the punishment for our sins, we can be declared righteous by God and our legal status changed from condemnation to exoneration. Divine forgiveness of sin is thus seen to be much more than a change of attitude toward us on God’s part but is analogous to a legal pardon. More than that, however, God’s justification of us is much more than a bare declaration of “not guilty.” Rather, God’s righteousness is imputed to us, as we are reckoned to be righteous by God. Though less clearly attested than the imputation of God’s righteousness to us, our sins were similarly apparently imputed to Christ, for he became accursed instead of us (Gal 3:13) and so is said to have “become sin” for our sake (2 Cor 5:21). Christ’s atoning death is thus closely connected to a forensic view of justification.

We have seen that Christ’s atoning death is taken by Paul to be not simply substitutionary but representational as well. Christ somehow represents every human being before God, such that his death can be said to be our death. But to become beneficiaries of his death, we must be united with Christ in a yet more intimate way through faith culminating in baptism, whereby we identify with his death and resurrection. It is only in so far as we are “in Christ” that his sacrifice on our behalf becomes efficacious.

Finally, the death of Christ on our behalf is the means of our redemption, as we are set free from sin and death. Christ’s life is the ransom paid for our redemption. Thereby Christ through the cross achieves a triumphant victory over the principalities and powers that had bound us.

It is evident, then, that a biblical doctrine of the atonement is so much more than a simple affirmation that Christ died for our sins but is a rich, variegated doctrine that places significant constraints on any Christian theory of the atonement.

In part 2 of this work we surveyed some of the highlights of the premodern dogmatic history of the atonement. Perhaps the most important result of our survey is the realization of the way in which these traditional atonement theories are so often misrepresented and even caricatured by some modern writers. In particular, we have seen that the Church Fathers were by no means committed to a single-faceted atonement theory of Christus Victor, much less to a ransom model of the same. Rather, the diversity of NT motifs and metaphors concerning the atonement is well represented in the Fathers.

Similarly, Anselm’s satisfaction theory should not be caricatured as portraying God as a feudal lord too vain to forgive an insult. Rather, Anselm’s great advance over the Church Fathers lies in his emphasis on divine justice and its satisfaction as a prerequisite of human salvation. Abelard, though emphasizing the moral influence of Christ’s passion, was also not an advocate of a single-faceted theory but seemed to recognize Christ’s payment of the penalty for our sins as well. Finally, Hugo Grotius has been hugely misrepresented and maligned, I think, in the secondary literature as an advocate of a so-called governmental theory of the atonement, when, in fact, he offered a brilliant defense of a non-necessitarian penal substitutionary theory of the atonement.

It is a curiosity of contemporary discussions of the atonement in English that Faustus Socinus is so consistently overlooked. Doubtless this is due to the surprising fact that no English translation of his hugely influential critique of satisfaction and penal substitutionary atonement theories has been published. Contemporary neo-Socinian objections, though widespread, are typically perfunctory and pale in comparison to Socinus’ own incisive criticisms. Also overlooked in contemporary discussions is the work of Francis Turretin, who, reflecting the work of Grotius, offers a powerful defense of penal substitution. Contemporary discussions of the atonement are the more impoverished for ignoring the contributions of these thinkers, who can serve as a rich source of insight.

Drawing upon the insights gained from the dogmatic history of the doctrine of the atonement, I have tried in part 3 to articulate the parameters of an atonement theory that is philosophically coherent while remaining faithful to the biblical doctrine. I have argued that at the heart of such a theory must be penal substitution. Because of the punitive nature of Christ’s vicarious suffering, the philosophy of law and particularly discussions of the theory of punishment provide a rich resource for the contemporary penal substitution theorist. One important insight, in line with biblical teaching but rarely appreciated in contemporary discussions, is that God should not be construed as merely a private person in a personal dispute but as Judge and Ruler of the world.

I have rejected the attempt to show that the doctrine of penal substitution is incoherent. The claim that harsh treatment inflicted on a substitute cannot be punishment is flawed on multiple grounds. Not every advocate of penal substitution holds that Christ was punished for our sins, though that is my predilection. Christian philosophers need not adopt, in any case, an expressivist definition of punishment, which is said to be the source of the incoherence. If we do accept an expressivist theory of punishment, the typical articulations of expressivist theories are perfectly compatible with penal substitution. Finally, even if we adopt a definition of punishment that is so narrowly construed as to rule out normal cases of penal substitution, that does not subvert the Reformers’ doctrine of penal substitution, since it is predicated on the doctrine of the imputation of our sin to Christ, which removes any incoherence arising from the definition of punishment.

The attempt to show that the doctrine of penal substitution is theologically incoherent is even less impressive. At least this objection recognizes, in contrast to many contemporary caricatures of penal substitution, that the theory is predicated on God’s love for people, which motivates His provision of a substitute! But the objection is a fundamental failure because it misconstrues God as a sort of private person setting conditions for personal love and forgiveness rather than as supreme Judge and Ruler, whose legal pardon has preconditions, which God Himself graciously supplies precisely because He is loving and forgiving.

The more important neo-Socinian objection to the justice of penal substitution, though formidable, is not unanswerable. Again, the objection applies only to theories that affirm that Christ was punished for our sins. More importantly, given a Divine Command Theory of ethics or something similar, God Himself by His commands determines what is just or unjust. Since He presumably does not issue commands to Himself, God has no moral prohibitions to abide by. He can do whatever He wants, so long as it is consistent with His nature. This fact makes it difficult for the objection even to get off the ground, since there is no one to prohibit God from punishing a substitute. The only way to rescue the objection, it seems, is to maintain, against Socinus, that retributive justice as we know and understand it is part of God’s nature, so that God cannot act contrary to the principles of retributive justice. This development in the dialectic is interesting because neo-Socinians seem so often opposed to divine retributive justice. In fact, they need retributive justice to be essential to God, lest God choose to punish the innocent.

But now the reformulated objection lacks nuance. It presupposes without warrant that God is by nature an unqualified negative retributivist. God could be a positive retributivist and even a negative retributivist with respect to human persons yet reserve for Himself the right to punish an innocent divine person in an act of divine Self-sacrifice. Furthermore, the objection overlooks the possibility that the prima facie demands of negative retributive justice might be overridden by weightier moral considerations in Christ’s case. Finally, the objection takes for granted that Christ was legally innocent, in opposition to the Reformers’ doctrine of imputation. The rejection of that doctrine on the grounds that there is nothing analogous to imputation in human experience betrays an ignorance of the law. Through the long established, widespread, and indispensable device of legal fictions, wrongful acts can be attributed to an individual other than the actor, so that the other individual is held legally guilty for the acts. Moreover, in both civil law and criminal law, persons can be held vicariously liable for wrongful acts, even though they did not commit such acts or any other wrongful acts related to such behavior. The point is not—God forbid!—that we should build our theology on the pattern of our justice system. Rather, the point is that the all-too-often repeated assertion that there is nothing in our experience analogous to the imputation of wrongdoing or guilt to an innocent person is simply mistaken. Imputation is, on the contrary, a familiar and relatively uncontroversial feature of our legal system.

If the coherence and justice of Christ’s penal substitution is thus defensible, the question then arises as to whether penal substitution satisfies divine justice. Again, the doctrine of imputation plays a key role in answering this question. For the lesson of vicarious liability is that punishment of only persons who are liable for wrongdoing satisfies justice’s demands. In some such cases, punishment of the vicariously liable superior alone satisfies the demands of justice. Given the doctrine of imputation of our sin to Christ, Christ was in God’s eyes legally liable for our sins. His punishment on our behalf can therefore meet the conditions for the satisfaction of divine justice. Moreover, Christ’s vicarious suffering was not merely substitutionary; it was representational. He was voluntarily our divinely appointed proxy before God, so that when he was punished we were punished, to the satisfaction of divine justice.

Neo-Socinian objections to the satisfactoriness of Christ’s penal substitution are not very compelling. Although Socinus thought that remission of sins and satisfaction for those sins is logically incompatible, Grotius’ claim seems plausible that the acceptance of a substitute for what is legally required does require a special dispensation on the part of the creditor or judge. In forgoing punishing us in our proper persons, God does act mercifully toward us. Socinus’ complaint that Christ did not suffer eternally for our sins is met by the affirmation of the deity of his person, for the intensity of what Christ suffered can more than offset the finitude of its duration. Indeed, since the future is potentially infinite only, the damned never suffer more than a finite amount of punishment.

The objection that Christ’s suffering the punishment due for all men’s sins would imply universal salvation need not be met by affirming the doctrine of limited atonement. For Christ’s atoning death may be taken to have potentially accomplished the redemption of all men, but this redemption is actualized progressively throughout history, only as people come to be united with Christ through repentance and faith. Like a pardon that has been issued and yet refused, Christ’s redeeming work remains inefficacious in the lives of those who refuse him.

The NT doctrine that we are redeemed from sin and death by Christ’s atoning death is illuminated by the way in which pardon functions in our legal system. A full pardon, granted, as in our case, after conviction for a capital crime, removes the convict’s liability to punishment and restores to him his civil rights. God’s forgiveness of our sins is like a legal pardon, since it is issued by executive authority to remove our liability to punishment. While a pardon does not erase the fact that criminal conduct has been committed, a pardon does expunge guilt, lest we be forced to say that a person who has been pardoned is still guilty and therefore deserving of further punishment, which is incoherent. Similarly, God’s pardon blots out our guilt, so that we are no longer liable to punishment.

Moreover, just as a pardon restores a pardonee’s civil rights, so a divine pardon bestows on us such benefits as adoption as sons, citizenship in the Kingdom of God, and inheritance of eternal life. A pardon is a legal action that does nothing to reform the criminal’s character. Similarly, a divine pardon is a forensic act that does not transform us into virtuous people. It simply changes our legal status. Moral transformation requires the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit to shape us gradually into the people that God wants us to be.

Pardons are traditionally taken to be acts of grace, issued on grounds of mercy. Certainly God’s pardon of us is presented in the NT as an act of grace toward us undeserving sinners. Yet this occasions a tension with God’s essential justice. Socinus thought that God’s acting mercifully would be impossible were retributive justice essential to God. But penal substitution provides a wonderful resolution of this tension. God’s essential justice and mercy are both exhibited in the cross of Christ, for Christ by his death satisfies the demands of divine justice, enabling God in turn to pardon our sins. The whole arrangement is an expression of God’s mercy. Thus, while a necessitarian view of the atonement may not be theologically required, it does, I think, make the best sense of the way in which Christ’s atonement displays both the mercy and justice of God.

We have noted that pardons can be refused, in which case they are rendered inefficacious, and can be conditional, in which case failure to meet the conditions nullifies the pardon. Similarly, refusal to accept a divine pardon renders Christ’s work on one’s behalf inefficacious in one’s life, and if one fails to meet the conditions of repentance and faith, a divine pardon avails one nothing.

Finally, we have noted various ways in which the death of Christ exerts a tremendous moral influence upon mankind, especially in the moving demonstration of God’s love in His Self-substitution for us in bearing awful suffering and in the fearsome demonstration of God’s righteous wrath in what it cost Christ to win our redemption.