The Nature of Penal Substitution
The Nature of Penal Substitution
I am not defending a characterization of penal substitution that goes something like this: God was so angry because of human sin that He had to inflict His violent wrath on somebody, and since He couldn't punish guilty sinners, He took out His anger on His innocent Son instead. It is unfortunately somewhat easy for penal substitution to come to be understood in this manner. For one, far too many human persons fit such a characterization of anger and punishment, making it easy to project this understanding onto God. But such an expression of anger and punishment is inappropriate at the human level, let alone the divine level. What this characterization of penal substitution misses is that God's anger/wrath is preceded and undergirded by His love and wisdom, and so the transfer of the punishment for human sinners to Christ is not out-of-control violence but rather loving and wise (cf. 1 Cor 1:23–25; John 5:8). Furthermore, this characterization erroneously splits the Trinity. On any thoughtful theory of penal substitution, there isn't one person of the Trinity (the Father) looking to punish another person (the Son). Instead, the entire Godhead—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—acts to bring about atonement for sin in a loving, wise, good, and just manner through the incarnate Christ's person and work. Certainly some explanation is still required as to how a penal substitute is loving, wise, good, and just, but there will be no ready answer to that if the above mischaracterization is our starting point.
I am also not defending a view of penal substitution that reduces Christ's salvific work to the cross alone or to only one aspect of what the cross accomplished.8 Jesus' central message was that the loving reign of God is available to human sinners through His incarnate life, death, resurrection, ascension, sending of the Spirit, ongoing intercession at the right hand of the Father, and eventual ushering in of the kingdom in its fullness. Having one's sins forgiven is one essential part of being reconciled with God, but there is certainly more to God's reign enveloping human life than mere forgiveness of sins. There is confession, repentance, and forgiveness, but there is also abiding in Him, walking in and being filled with His Spirit, dying to self, learning to obey His commands, and so on. There is no question that salvation is more than the cross and the cross is more than penal substitution. Other models of the atonement (e.g., Christus victor) have biblical support and flesh out other dimensions of the cross and salvation.9 Furthermore, certain cultures may more readily identify with nonpenal aspects of the atonement—whether these relate to Jesus' removing shame and impurity, bestowing a status of honor and purification—or to Jesus' superior power over evil forces at work. The atonement's bearing on considerations of (im)purity, (dis)honor, and fear/power in, say, Eastern or African cultures may resonate more powerfully than a penal model.10 And yet, while we certainly don't want to reduce salvation and the cross to penal substitution, let us not make the opposite mistake of going too far to the other extreme and overly minimizing the role of the cross in salvation and/or the presence of a penal substitutionary element to the cross.
Of course, it is one thing to clarify what penal substitution is not, and it is another to specify what penal substitution is. While there have been numerous explications of the doctrine, the central claim is that in His voluntary suffering and death, Christ takes on the penal consequences of human sin on behalf of human sinners. It is precisely the plausibility of this general claim, however the details may be spelled out, that needs to be defended morally.