Christian Doctrines Iii
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CHRISTIAN DOCTRINES III
ATONEMENT
Not that Christianity is the only religion of historical importance, nor evidently the best of them. On the contrary, there is quite a strong case for considering it the worst, resting as it does on the allied doctrines of original sin and vicarious atonement, which are intellectually contemptible and morally outrageous.
A. J. Ayer, The Guardian, August 30, 1979
The problems that people have with ideas like expiation and representation (or substitution) in our secularized age rest less on any lack of forcefulness in the traditional terms than on the fact that those who are competent to interpret them do not explain their content with sufficient forcefulness or clarity.
Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology
1—Introduction
The word atonement is unique among theological terms in being a derivation, not from Greek or Latin, but from Middle English, namely, the phrase “at onement,” designating a state of harmony. Its primary meaning is reconciliation, specifically between God and man. Reconciliation is the overarching theme of the New Testament, and other important motifs such as the kingdom of God, salvation, justification, and redemption are subservient to it. Atonement thus lies at the heart of the Christian faith.
The message of the New Testament is that God, out of his great love, has provided the means of atonement through Christ. By his death on the cross Christ has made possible the reconciliation of alienated and condemned sinners to God (Jn 3:16). Thus “the cross” came to be a metaphor epitomizing the gospel message, such that Paul could call the gospel “the word of the cross” (1 Cor 1:18 RSV).
But how did Christ’s death on the cross overcome the estrangement and condemnation of sinners before a holy God, so as to reconcile us to him? Embroiled as they were in debates concerning the person of Christ (viz., concerning the Trinity and incarnation), the church fathers devoted little time to reflection on what later theologians were to call the work of Christ (e.g., his achieving atonement). As a result, no ecumenical council ever pronounced on the subject of the atonement, leaving the church without conciliar guidance. A great variety of theories of the atonement have been offered over the centuries to make sense of the fact that Christ by his death has provided the means of reconciliation with God: ransom theories, satisfaction theories, moral influence theories, penal substitution theories, and so on. Had space permitted, we should like to have surveyed the major alternatives here. Competing theories need to be assessed by their accord with biblical teaching and their philosophical coherence.
Unfortunately, the work of contemporary Christian philosophers on the doctrine of the atonement has been largely uninformed by biblical exegesis. Theories of the atonement are formulated on the basis of the way in which reconciliation is typically achieved in human relationships. Not only does such a methodology risk distortion because of the enormous disanalogies between merely human relationships and divine-human relationships, but more fundamentally it runs the risk of developing a theory of the atonement that, however congenial, just is not a Christian theory of the atonement because it does not accord with the biblical data. Again, limitations of space do not permit a review of the biblical data here, but any theory aspiring to be a Christian atonement theory must adequately capture such biblical motifs as sacrifice, the suffering servant of the Lord, justification, representation, redemption, and so on.
While not defending a specific atonement theory, we do think that any adequate theory must incorporate the following elements: penal substitution, satisfaction, redemption, and moral influence. We shall survey each of these in turn.
2—Penal Substitution
First, an essential, and indeed central, element of any biblically adequate atonement theory is penal substitution. Penal substitution in a theological context is the doctrine that God inflicted on Christ the suffering we deserved as the punishment for our sins, as a result of which we no longer deserve punishment. Notice that this explication leaves open the question whether Christ was punished for our sins. Some defenders of penal substitution recoil at the thought that God punished his beloved Son for our sins. Rather God afflicted Christ with the suffering that, had it been inflicted on us, would have been our just desert and, hence, punishment. In other words, Christ was not punished, but he endured the suffering that would have been our punishment had it been inflicted on us. We do not want to exclude by definition such accounts as being penal substitutionary theories, since Christ on such accounts suffers as our substitute and bears what would have been our punishment, thereby freeing us from punishment. Of course, our explication also permits the penal substitution theorist to affirm that Christ was, indeed, punished in our place and so bore the punishment for our sins.
No atonement theory that omits penal substitution can hope to account adequately for the biblical data, particularly Isaiah 53 and its New Testament employment. More than that, penal substitution, if true, could not be a merely subsidiary facet of an adequate atonement theory, for it is foundational to many other aspects of the atonement, such as redemption from sin, satisfaction of divine justice, and the moral influence of Christ’s example. So a multifaceted atonement theory must include penal substitution at its center.
The doctrine of penal substitution, ever since the time of Faustus Socinus (1539–1604), has faced formidable, and some would say insuperable, philosophical challenges. In discussing these challenges, our aim is not to articulate a single solution to them but to explore some of the various options open to the Christian thinker. A discussion of such challenges takes us into lively debates over questions in a subdiscipline of philosophy not yet broached in this book, namely, philosophy of law, particularly questions about the theory of punishment. Unfortunately, most theologians have little familiarity with these debates. The doctrine of penal substitution is almost invariably dismissed by its critics in a single paragraph, even a single sentence, to the effect that it would be unjust of God to punish an innocent person for others’ sins, end of discussion. We need to go deeper.
One’s theory of punishment should offer both a definition of punishment and a justification of punishment, aspects of the theory of punishment that legal philosophers have teased apart only in recent decades. A definition of punishment will enable us to determine whether some act counts as punishment, while a justification of punishment will help us to determine whether a punitive act is permitted or even required, depending on one’s theory. Both of these aspects of the theory of punishment are relevant to the doctrine of penal substitution. Indeed, penal substitution is not infrequently discussed in an entirely nontheological context. It will be up to the Christian philosopher to make the theological application.
A cautionary word, however, is in order at this point. The punishment discussed by legal theorists and philosophers of law is almost invariably legal punishment in the context of criminal law. Even when discussing penalties that are mandated by civil law rather than criminal law, the framework is still legal. One is discussing punishment as administered by the state as part of a system of justice. As some philosophers have pointed out, such a theory of punishment is too narrow to serve as a general theory of punishment, for punishment also takes place outside the justice system, for example, in the family or schoolroom or workplace. Most theorists acknowledge this fact but are interested, after all, in the philosophy of law and so choose to ignore punishment outside a legal context. We cannot do so, since our interest is overtly theological. While analogous to divine justice, human systems of justice will also have features that are significantly disanalogous to divine justice. To give an obvious example, the state may be forced not to administer punishment as a result of lack of prison space due to overcrowding and lack of resources. God is evidently not so hampered. Legal theorists and philosophers of law have poured an enormous amount of thought into the theory of punishment, so we may expect to learn a great deal from them, but we must be mindful that their theories of punishment are not directly transferable to all forms of punishment, not to speak of divine punishment.
2.1 Definition of Punishment
What, then, is punishment? Punishment involves, first, harsh treatment, as is obvious from typical cases of punishment. Harsh treatment is not sufficient for punishment, however. As Socinus recognized, God may justifiably inflict suffering on some person without its being punishment. So what transforms harsh treatment into punishment? This is where the debate begins.
2.1.1 The Alleged Incoherence of Penal Substitution
No consensus exists concerning the conditions sufficient for punishment. But consider Alec Walen’s characterization of some of the necessary conditions of punishment in a standard philosophical encyclopedia:
For an act to count as punishment, it must have four elements.
First, it must impose some sort of cost or hardship on, or at the very least withdraw a benefit that would otherwise be enjoyed by, the person being punished.
Second, the punisher must do so intentionally, not as an accident, and not as a side-effect of pursuing some other end.
Third, the hardship or loss must be imposed in response to what is believed to be a wrongful act or omission.
Fourth, the hardship or loss must be imposed, at least in part, as a way of sending a message of condemnation or censure for what is believed to be a wrongful act or omission.
This is a version of what is called an expressivist theory of punishment, made popular by Joel Feinberg, according to which the harsh treatment imposed must express “condemnation or censure” in order to count as punishment. Many expressivist thinkers would want to amend the characterization above to require that the hard treatment be imposed by a recognized authority, so as to distinguish punishment from personal vengeance or vigilantism.
Some critics of penal substitution have claimed that, given an expressivist theory of punishment, it is conceptually impossible that God punish Christ for our sins. For God could not condemn or censure Christ, since he did no wrong. The point is not that it would be immoral for God to punish Christ for others’ wrongs, but that any such harsh treatment inflicted on him by God for those wrongs would not count as punishment because it would not express censure.
2.1.2 Responses to the Alleged Incoherence of Penal Substitution
There are a number of ways in which the proponent of penal substitution might respond to this claim. If he holds to the view mentioned above that God did not punish Christ, then he will be unfazed by and perhaps even welcome this objection.
If the theorist holds that God did punish Christ for our sins, then it is open to him simply to reject an expressivist theory of punishment. Though popular, it is not as though the theory has overwhelming arguments in support. Indeed, one of the problems with the theory is that, contrary to claims of its proponents, the line between punishments and mere penalties in the law does not coincide with the line between condemnatory and noncondemnatory harsh treatment. Feinberg thinks that we should not apply the term punishment to parking tickets, offside penalties in sports, firings at work, flunkings in school, disqualifications from competitions, and so on. He calls these “penalties” to distinguish them from “punishments” technically so-called, which always express censure. Similarly, tort awards and fines inflicted for violations of civil law should not be considered punishments but penalties. This distinction, however, is not a clean one. Penalties can be very harsh indeed, and plausibly often express society’s “resentment” and “stern judgment of disapproval” for the wrong done. This seems undeniable in cases involving torts such as assault, battery, defamation, fraud, and wrongful death. Indeed, some torts are also crimes, in which case the act for which compensatory damages are awarded is also the object of condemnation in a criminal verdict. And even for torts that are not crimes, sometimes the damages awarded are actually punitive damages, which exceed the aims of merely corrective justice. Very large awards, in particular, plausibly express society’s strong disapproval of the wrong done to the plaintiff. Even in sports, penalties imposed for fouls like unsportsmanlike conduct and taunting seem to carry censure with them. While these infractions are not crimes, since they are not violations of criminal law, the penalties imposed for such infractions plausibly express censure.
By the same token there are crimes that are punishable, even though such punishments do not seem to express censure. For example, crimes involving so-called mala prohibita are punishable, even though such punishments may no longer express resentment or stern disapproval, such as punishment for violation of federal laws against marijuana possession. Moreover, there are in the criminal law cases of so-called strict liability, in which crimes are committed without fault and yet are punishable. These are far from unusual cases and include crimes like possession of narcotics or firearms and the selling of mislabeled foods. Punishments for crimes of strict liability seem to involve no censure of the person involved and yet are still punishments in our criminal justice system. The fact that such crimes are punished by fines rather than imprisonment is just as plausibly explained by the fact that imprisonment is seen as more severe than fines, rather than seen as carrying censure that fines do not.
In fact, penal substitution in a secular context furnishes a powerful counterexample to the claim that punishment inherently expresses an attitude of censure or condemnation toward the person punished. As Hugo Grotius (1583–1645) documents (Defence of the Catholic Faith 4), the punishment of a substitute was well-understood and widely accepted in the ancient world. Not only so, but those who voluntarily stepped forward to die as a substitute for someone else were universally admired as paradigms of nobility. We moderns may regard such a practice as immoral and ourselves as more enlightened for renouncing it, but it would be an example of cultural imperialism to claim that these ancient societies did not really endorse and even practice substitutionary punishment. To think that because it was unjust it was not punishment is to confuse the definition of punishment with the justification of punishment, an error made by theorists who similarly held that punishment of the innocent is not really punishment. Just as most theorists today recognize that it is possible to punish the innocent, so we should acknowledge the possibility of punishing a substitute.
A defender of penal substitution could avoid the present objection, then, by adopting some nonexpressivist theory of punishment according to which punishment is harsh treatment of someone by a recognized authority for an infraction of a law or command.
Alternatively, suppose that we do adopt the widely held view of punishment as expressive of censure. In that case, borrowing Feinberg’s distinction between punishment and penalty, why may the defender of penal substitution not say that God penalized Christ for our sins, that Christ paid the penalty for our sins? If God’s harsh treatment of Christ did not express censure, then God did not punish Christ for our sins, but he may still be said to have penalized him for our sins. Feinberg himself says that inflicting penalties on an innocent person may be even worse than inflicting punishments on an innocent person, in which case the alleged coherence problem collapses to the moral problem.
Seen in this light, the critic of penal substitution is employing what the eminent legal theorist H. L. A. Hart famously called “a definitional stop” to shut down debate. Anthony Quinton had argued that in order for harsh treatment to be punishment the person afflicted with harsh treatment had to deserve that treatment. The problem with Quinton’s definition was that it made it logically impossible to punish the innocent. Yet it is indisputable that innocent people are often found guilty and subjected to harsh treatment for crimes they did not commit. Quinton was forced to say that such persons, though sentenced and treated harshly, were not really punished, technically speaking. Hart’s complaint was that ruling out their treatment as punishment by mere definition was just a semantic maneuver that masked important questions about punishment. In order to avoid the definitional stop, Hart maintained that we must recognize certain secondary forms of punishment, such as punishment of persons who neither are in fact nor are supposed to be offenders.
The influence of Hart’s complaint against definitional stops may be seen in Walen’s characterization of punishment cited above, for it does not require that the person punished be guilty as accused—the harsh treatment must be imposed in response to what is believed to be a wrong action. Even that seems too strong a condition, for tyrants may punish innocents for acts that they do not even believe to be wrong. It would be better to say “in response to acts alleged to be wrong.”
The critic of the coherence of penal substitution similarly tries to bring a definitional stop to debate over penal substitution by defining punishment in such a way that penal substitution is ruled out by definition. David Lewis responds to this attempt to short-circuit debate by saying, “I trust that the reader will understand: I mean that the volunteer undergoes something that would have constituted punishment if it had happened instead to the guilty offender.” Discussion of the justice of such treatment may then proceed. Lewis’s counterfactual characterization is, in fact, in accord with penal substitution as we have defined it. Accordingly, if an expressivist theory of punishment rules out substitutionary punishment by definition, the Christian expressivist need not be troubled by such an attempted definitional stop but may adopt a counterfactual characterization.
But does an expressivist theory of punishment in fact rule out substitutionary punishment, as we have taken for granted? Not at all, for expressivism as typically formulated is wholly consistent with penal substitution. Consider, for example, Walen’s account given above. His fourth condition does not require that the person punished is condemned or censured for the act or omission believed to be wrong. Censure could be either of the person who did the act or of the act itself. Similarly, on Feinberg’s account “punishment expresses the community’s strong disapproval of what the criminal did. Indeed it can be said that punishment expresses the judgment of the community that what the criminal did was wrong.” Even if we say that punishment expresses condemnation of the wrongdoer as the performer of the wrong, we have not ruled out penal substitution, for we have not required that condemnation be directed toward the person bearing the punishment. The point is that expressivist theories of punishment, as typically formulated, are perfectly consistent with penal substitution—which is just as it should be, given the attitudes of those in societies endorsing and practicing penal substitution.
Suppose one adopts an expressivist theory of punishment, which does require that censure be directed toward the person punished. Would such a theory rule out Christ’s being punished for our sins? Not necessarily, for one might espouse a theory of penal substitution that includes the imputation of our sins to Christ, such as the Protestant Reformers articulated. On such a theory, Christ, though personally without moral fault, is legally guilty and so condemned by God for our sins. Critics of the coherence of penal substitution admit that given the doctrine of the imputation of sins, their charge of incoherence fails; but they complain that we have no experience of the transfer of moral responsibility for actions from one person to another.
The force of this objection depends on the probability that if the doctrine of imputation is true, then we should have some experience of such a transfer in human affairs. But why think that? The proponent of penal substitution might plausibly respond that our want of such experience is hardly surprising, since imputation of sins or guilt is a uniquely divine act. Arguably, only God as supreme Lawgiver, Judge, and Ruler is in a position to impute the sins and guilt of one person to another.
But are we utterly bereft of analogies to imputation? We think not. It is worth noting that the question does not concern the transfer of guilt from one person to another, in the sense that guilt is removed from one person and placed on another. For the defender of the doctrine of imputation does not hold that when my guilt is imputed to Christ, it is thereby removed from me. Guilt is merely replicated in Christ, just as, according to the doctrine of original sin, Adam’s guilt was replicated in me, not transferred from Adam to me. The entire rationale of penal substitution is, rather, the removal of guilt by punishment. What is at issue, then, is whether we have any experience of the replication of guilt in a person different from the person who did the act. So understood, we are not wholly without analogies in our justice system.
In civil law there are cases involving what is called vicarious liability. In such cases the principle of respondeat superior (loosely, the master is answerable) is invoked in order to impute the liability of a subordinate to his superior, for example, a master’s being held liable for acts done by his servant. On the contemporary scene this master/servant relationship has been extended to cover employer/employee relations. An employer, for example, may be held liable for acts done by his employee in his role as employee, even though the employer did not do these acts himself. It needs to be emphasized that the employer is not in such cases being held liable for other acts, such as negligence or complicity. Indeed, he may be utterly blameless in the matter. Rather the liability incurred by his employee for certain acts is imputed to him in virtue of his relationship with the employee, even though he did not himself do the acts in question. The liability is not thereby transferred from the employee to the employer; rather the liability of the employee is replicated in the employer. In cases of vicarious liability, then, we have the responsibility for the act imputed to another person than the actor.
It might be said that in such civil cases guilt is not imputed to another person but mere liability. This claim may be left moot, for vicarious liability also makes an appearance in criminal law as well as civil law. The liability for crimes committed by a subordinate in the discharge of his duties can also be imputed to his superior. Both the employer and the employee may be found guilty for crimes that only the employee committed. In such a case, we have the guilt of one person imputed to another person, who did not do the act. Interestingly, vicarious liability is another case of strict liability, where the superior is held to be guilty without being found blameworthy, since no mens rea is required. He is thus guilty and liable to punishment even though he is not culpable. Thus the vicarious liability that exists in the law suffices to show that the imputation of our guilt to Christ is not wholly without parallel in our experience. In the law’s imputation of guilt to another person than the actor, we actually have a very close analogy to the doctrine of the imputation of our guilt to Christ.
In summary, the proponent of penal substitution may either agree that Christ was not punished or else hold that an expressivist theory of punishment is either mistaken or compatible with substitutionary punishment.
2.2 Justification of Punishment
We now come to the more important question of what justifies the imposition of punishment. One’s justification of punishment will be determined by one’s overarching theory of justice. Theories of justice may be classified as broadly retributive or consequentialist. Retributive theories of justice hold that punishment is justified because the guilty deserve to be punished. Consequentialist theories of justice hold that punishment is justified because of the extrinsic goods that may be realized thereby, such as deterrence of crime, sequestration of dangerous persons, and reformation of wrongdoers. Retributive theories are often said to be retrospective, imposing punishment for crimes committed, whereas consequentialist theories are prospective, imposing punishment to prevent crimes from being committed.
2.2.1 The Alleged Injustice of Penal Substitution
Critics of penal substitution frequently assert that God’s punishing Christ in our place would be an injustice on God’s part. For it is an axiom of retributive justice that it is unjust to punish an innocent person. But Christ was an innocent person. Since God is perfectly just, he cannot therefore have punished Christ. It does no good to say that Christ willingly undertook this self-sacrifice on our behalf, for the nobility of his selfless act does not annul the injustice of punishing an innocent person for deeds he did not do.
One quick and easy way to deal with this objection would be to adopt a consequentialist theory of justice. It is common coin that on consequentialist theories of justice punishment of the innocent may be justified, in view, for example, of its deterrence value. In fact, one of the main criticisms of consequentialist theories of justice is precisely the fact that on such theories it may be just to punish the innocent. A consequentialist penal theorist could fairly easily provide justification for God’s punishing Christ for our sins, namely, so doing prevents the loss of the entire human race.
But consequentialism seems ill-suited to serve as a basis for divine punishment because God’s judgment is described in the Bible as ultimately eschatological. The ungodly are “storing up wrath” for themselves for God’s final day of judgment (Rom 2:5). Punishment imposed at that point could seemingly serve no other purpose than retribution. In any case, the biblical view is that the wicked deserve punishment (Rom 1:32; Heb 10:29), so that retributive justice must be at least part of the justification of divine punishment.
During the first half of the twentieth century, under the influence of social scientists, retributive theories of justice were frowned on in favor of consequentialist theories. Fortunately, there has been over the last half century or so a renaissance of theories of retributive justice, accompanied by a fading of consequentialist theories, so that we need not be sidetracked by the need to justify a retributive theory of justice. This change is due in no small part to the unwelcome implication of pure consequentialism that there are circumstances under which it is just to punish innocent people. Unfortunately, it is precisely the conviction that the innocent ought not to be punished that lies behind the claim that penal substitutionary atonement theories are unjust and immoral.
2.2.2 Responses to the Alleged Injustice of Penal Substitution
An assessment of this objection requires its contextualization within a metaethical theory about the grounding of objective moral values and duties. The proponents of penal substitution were, like Anselm, proponents of some sort of divine command theory of ethics, according to which moral duties are constituted by divine imperatives. There is no external law hanging over God to which he must conform. Since God does not issue commands to himself, he literally has no moral duties to fulfill. He can act in any way consistent with his nature. He does not have the moral duties we have and will have unique prerogatives, such as giving and taking human life as he wills. He may usually act in accordance with duty, to borrow a Kantian phrase, but since he does not act from duty, he is free to make exceptions. This is the lesson of the astonishing story of God’s commanding Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac (Gen 22:1-19).
Now if such a metaethical theory is even coherent, not to say true, as we have for wholly independent reasons argued it is (chap. 28, sec. 5), then the present objection will have difficulty even getting off the ground. As Grotius observed, even if God has established a system of justice among human beings that forbids the punishment of the innocent (and, hence, substitutionary punishment), he himself is not so forbidden. He declined Moses’ offer of himself as a substitutionary sacrifice (Ex 32:30-34), just as he refused the sacrificing of Isaac, but if he wills to take on human nature in the form of Jesus of Nazareth and give his own life as a sacrificial offering for sin, who is to forbid him? He is free to do so as long as it is consistent with his nature. And what could be more consistent with our God’s gracious nature than that he should condescend to take on our frail and fallen humanity and give his life to pay the penalty for our sin exacted by his own justice? The self-giving sacrifice of Christ exalts the nature of God by displaying his holy love.
Perhaps the best face that can be put on this objection is to claim that, contrary to Socinus, retributive justice is part of God’s nature, and so it is impossible that he act contrary to the principles of retributive justice. But what is retributive justice? The objectors to penal substitution have not sufficiently differentiated various accounts of retributive justice. While a so-called negative retributivism holds that the innocent should not be punished because they do not deserve it, the essence of retributive justice lies in so-called positive retributivism, which holds that the guilty should be punished because they deserve it. What distinguishes retributivism as a theory of justice is the positive thesis that punishment of the guilty is an intrinsic good because the guilty deserve it. God is a positive retributivist “who will by no means clear the guilty” (Ex 34:7 RSV). But the penal theorist may maintain that God is only qualifiedly a negative retributivist, since even if he has prohibited human beings from punishing innocent persons (Deut 24:16), and even if he is too good to himself punish innocent human persons, still he reserves the prerogative to punish an innocent divine person, namely Christ, in the place of the guilty. This extraordinary exception is a result of his goodness, not a defect in his justice.
Lest positive retributivism be thought to be too thin a theory of retributive justice to ascribe to God, it should be noted how extraordinarily strong such a thesis is, so strong in fact that it has been criticized as utterly unrealistic on a human level. Zaibert indicts Michael Moore’s claim that just desert constitutes a sufficient condition of punishment (i.e., the guilty should be punished because they deserve it) as entailing legal moralism, which would require the state to punish every moral wrong. Legal moralism would require “an impossibly large criminal justice apparatus,” which would be “utterly unmanageable and unrealistic.” Even outside the context of the state the implausibility of punishing every immorality is so high that even the staunchest unbridled retributivist has to admit that such a suggestion must be rejected. It is arguably impossible to do this, Zaibert exclaims, without going crazy. The theist can only smile at this secular theorist’s huffing and puffing about a task that only God is qualified to carry out. But at least we see therein how robust is a positive retributive theory of justice, which can then be further augmented by taking God to be a qualified negative retributivist as well.
This suffices to dispense with the objection; but even more can be said. For the objection also fails to recognize an important distinction made within the theory of punishment between justification of the practice of punishment and justification of an act of punishment. When positive retributivists claim that the guilty should be punished, they are talking about a justification of the general practice of punishment, not about specific cases. In specific cases, the act of punishment may not be required in light of overriding considerations, for example, the securing of a plea bargain in order that persons guilty of even more heinous crimes can be punished. In such a case the demands of retributive justice are waived. Similarly, even if God’s essential justice includes unqualified negative retributivism, there can be overriding considerations in the case of Christ.
Drawing on Aristotle’s distinction between the just/unjust quality of an act and the just/unjust effect of an act on others, Feinberg and Hyman Gross observe that there are occasions in which a person can be fully justified in voluntarily producing an unjust effect on another. Person A may be justified in violating person B’s rights when there is no third alternative open to him; but that justification does not cancel the injustice done to B. “In that case, we can say that B was unjustly treated although A’s act resulting in that effect was not an instance of unjust behavior. For an act to have an unjust quality (whatever its effects) it must be, objectively speaking, the wrong thing to do in the circumstances, unexcused and unjustified, voluntarily undertaken, and deliberately chosen by an unrushed actor who is well aware of the alternatives open to him.” In the case of the death of Christ the penal theorist claims that God did the “right” thing (i.e., acted in accord with the right) in allowing Christ to be unjustly treated for the sake of the salvation of mankind. Biblical scholar D. A. Carson reminds us, “It is the unjust punishment of the Servant in Isaiah 53 that is so remarkable. Forgiveness, restoration, salvation, reconciliation—all are possible, not because sins have somehow been canceled as if they never were, but because another bore them unjustly. But by this adverb ‘unjustly’ I mean that the person who bore them was just and did not deserve the punishment, not that some moral ‘system’ that God was administering was thereby distorted.” In the specific case of Christ’s death the demands of retributive justice were overridden by the great goods that came out of it.
Even Michael Moore, one of the staunchest of contemporary retributivists, recognizes that the demands of retributive justice are prima facie demands that can be and are overridden in specific cases. That is why Moore is not committed, as Zaibert imagines, to legal moralism. Moore says that we must not confuse the intrinsic goodness of retribution with the categorical duty to carry out retributive justice on every possible occasion. He calls himself a “threshold deontologist”; that is to say, he abides by the categorical norm of morality until doing so produces sufficiently bad consequences as to pass some threshold. So in the extreme case where one must punish an innocent person or else the world will be totally destroyed, one should punish the person. God by punishing Christ for our sins has saved the world from total destruction and was therefore acting compatibly with moral goodness.
Up to this point we have acquiesced in the assumption that Christ was indeed innocent. But for penal theorists like the Reformers, who affirm the imputation of our sins to Christ, there is no question in his case of God’s punishing the innocent and so violating even the prima facie demands of negative retributive justice. For Christ in virtue of the imputation of our sins to him was legally guilty before God. Of course, because our sins were merely imputed to Christ and not infused in him, Christ was, as always, personally virtuous, a paradigm of compassion, selflessness, purity, and courage, but he was declared legally guilty before God. Therefore, he was legally liable to punishment. Thus, given the doctrine of the imputation of sins, the present objection to penal substitutionary theories is a nonstarter, being based on a false assumption.
In sum, penal substitution will be a central facet of any atonement theory claiming to be Christian. Objections to penal substitution based on the definition of punishment or on the justification of punishment are insufficiently nuanced and so fail to show any conceptual incoherence or injustice in God’s punishing Christ in our place.
3—Satisfaction of Divine Justice
Second, a biblically adequate atonement theory must also include propitiation, the appeasement of God’s just wrath against sin. The source of God’s wrath is his retributive justice, and so appeasement of wrath is a matter of the satisfaction of divine justice. Anselm’s satisfaction theory presents the atonement theorist with a choice: since the demands of divine justice must be satisfied, there must be either punishment of or compensation for sin. Anselm chose the second alternative, since he naturally assumed that punishment would result in mankind’s eternal damnation. By contrast the Protestant Reformers chose the first alternative, holding that Christ bore the punishment we deserved. Anselm and the Reformers are therefore very much on the same footing: in order for salvation to be possible, divine justice must somehow be satisfied.
3.1 The Alleged Unsatisfactoriness of Penal Substitution
It might be objected that penal substitution could not possibly meet the demands of retributive justice. The objection here is not that penal substitution is unjust but that it is ineffectual. For punishing another person for my crimes would not serve to remove my guilt. Even given the doctrine of imputation of sins, Christ’s being punished would at most remove the guilt imputed to him, but it would not remove my guilt. So how can penal substitution satisfy God’s justice?
Once this question is contextualized, as it must be, within a broader metaethical theory such as divine command theory, then the objection becomes rather odd. For on Judeo-Christian theism God is the Legislator, Judge, and Ruler of the moral realm. So if he determines that the demands of justice are met by Christ’s punishment, who is to gainsay him? He is the source of the moral law, its interpreter, and its executor. He himself determines what meets justice’s demands. So what is the problem?
It might be objected that God, so understood, could then have simply remitted everyone’s sins without satisfaction of his justice. But the church fathers freely embraced this consequence, as did Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) and Grotius after them. These thinkers held that God had good, if contingent, reasons for punishing Christ substitutionally. As Peter Abelard (1079–1142) and Grotius saw, so doing was a powerful display of both God’s love of people and his hatred of sin, which has proved powerfully attractive throughout history in drawing people to faith in Christ, especially as they themselves face innocent suffering (recall chap. 29). God’s pardoning sin without satisfaction does not, despite first appearances, imply universalism, for God’s pardon may still require its free acceptance by people, and it is not at all implausible that a world in which the great demonstration of God’s love and holiness in the vicarious suffering and death of Christ occurs is a world in which a more optimal number of people come freely to embrace salvation than a world in which free pardon without cost or consequence is offered.
Still, penal substitution is supposed to satisfy divine justice, if only contingently. How can it do so? The above response seems to imply an account of satisfaction as so-called acceptation. The medieval theologian John Duns Scotus (1266–1308) suggested that God might have accepted any sacrifice he pleased as satisfactory for the demands of his retributive justice. Defenders of penal substitution have not been sympathetic to acceptation accounts. For then God might have accepted as satisfactory the death of any ordinary human being or even an animal. But then it is not true, as Scripture affirms, that “it is impossible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sins” (Heb 10:4 RSV). The objector to substitutionary satisfaction would find a sympathetic ear among penal substitution theorists if he affirmed that retributive justice, as we know and understand it, is essential to God’s nature and so could not be satisfied by such sacrifices. But then how can the punishment of Christ satisfy the demands of retributive justice?
3.2 Responses to the Alleged Unsatisfactoriness of Penal Substitution
We may get at this question by asking, How does punishment ordinarily work to remove guilt? How does pardon, for that matter, remove guilt? In criminal law guilt is typically constituted by a wrongful act (actus reus) and a blameworthy mental state (mens rea). Obviously neither punishment nor pardon annuls the fact that a person committed a certain act in the past nor the fact that the act was wrong. Neither does it annul the fact that the person acted intentionally and without excuse. But these just are the conditions Moore identifies as just desert. It follows that a person who has been punished as sentenced (or pardoned) is still guilty and still deserves punishment! Guilt could never be removed. But if we take guilt just to be liability to punishment, then being punished discharges one’s liability to punishment and, hence, one’s desert. Justice is thereby satisfied.
So why can a substitute not discharge one’s liability to punishment? Lewis observes that our justice system remains deeply conflicted about this question. Although criminal law does not permit substitutionary punishment, civil law does. A friend can pay a person’s fine if both agree to the arrangement. “Yet this is just as much a case of penal substitution as the others.” Lewis rejects the view espoused by expressivists that these penalties are not really punishments. Some of these fines, Lewis remarks, are just as burdensome as prison sentences—and, we might add, just as censorious. If we were single-mindedly against penal substitution, Lewis says, then we should conclude that fines are an unsatisfactory form of punishment, that such punishment, in other words, fails to satisfy justice’s demands. But we do not. Lewis draws the following lesson:
If the rest of us were to make so bold as to rebuke the Christians for their two-mindedness, they would have a good tu quoque against us. A tu quoque is not a rejoinder on behalf of penal substitution. Yet neither is it intellectually weightless. It indicates that both sides agree that penal substitution sometimes makes sense after all, even if none can say how it makes sense. And if both sides agree to that, that is some evidence that somehow they might both be right.
That is to say, they might both be right that penal substitution may sometimes satisfy justice’s demands, just as the Reformers maintained.
Protestant theologians like Francis Turretin (1623–1687) did offer an account of how penal substitution in the case of Christ makes sense. Christ, he maintains, is not merely our substitute but also our representative before God (Institutes of Elenctic Theology 16.3). This important distinction requires a word of explanation about substitution and representation respectively. In substitution someone takes the place of another person but does not represent that person. For example, a pinch hitter in baseball enters the lineup to bat in the place of another player. He is a substitute for that player but in no sense represents that other player. That is why the batting average of the player he replaces is not affected by the pinch hitter’s performance. On the other hand, a representative acts on behalf of another person and serves as his spokesman. For example, the baseball player has an agent who represents him in contract negotiations with the team. The representative does not replace the player but merely advocates for him.
Turretin believes that Christ, in bearing our punishment, was both our substitute and our representative before God. He was punished in our place, bearing the suffering we deserved. But he also represented us before God, so that his punishment was our punishment. A good illustration of this combination of substitution and representation is to be found in the role of a proxy at a shareholders’ meeting. If we cannot attend the meeting ourselves, we may sign an agreement authorizing someone else to serve as our proxy at the meeting. He votes for us, and because he has been authorized to do so, his votes are our votes: we have voted via proxy at the meeting of shareholders. The proxy is a substitute in that he attends the meeting in our place, but he is also our representative in that he does not vote instead of us but on our behalf, so that we vote. Similarly, Christ was not merely punished instead of us, rather we were punished by proxy. For that reason, divine justice is satisfied.
How is it that we are so represented by Christ? Turretin proposed two ways in which we are in union with Christ, first, by way of his incarnation and, second, by way of our mystical union with him. Although theologians often appeal to this latter union of believers with Christ to explain the efficacy of his atonement, such an account seems to be explanatorily inverted. As Turretin emphasized, it is union with Christ that is the basis of the imputation of sins and our justification. But the problem is that the mystical union of believers with Christ is the privilege only of persons who are regenerate and justified. There is here a vicious explanatory circle: in order to be in mystical union with Christ one must first be justified, but in order to be justified one must first be in mystical union with Christ. What is needed is a union with Christ that is explanatorily prior to (even if chronologically simultaneous with) imputation and justification.
Turretin’s first proposal is therefore to be preferred. In virtue of Christ’s incarnation (and, we should say, his baptism, whereby Jesus identified himself with fallen humanity), Christ is appointed by God to serve as our proxy before him. It is of little consequence if there is no parallel to such an arrangement in our criminal justice system; indeed, God may even forbid such substitutionary punishment of human persons. But he is free to make such an arrangement himself. The Logos, the second person of the Trinity, has been voluntarily appointed to serve as our proxy before God by means of his incarnation and baptism, so that by his death he might satisfy the demands of divine justice.
Turretin’s analysis of Christ’s punishment as God the Father’s withdrawing from him the beatific vision and suspending the joy and comfort and sense and fruition of full felicity (Institutes 14.11) comports well with the model of the incarnation we have proposed, whereby the Logos in his waking, human consciousness is bereaved of these blessings. It is the divine Logos himself who suffers these bereavements in his human nature.
4—Redemption
Third, redemption through Christ’s blood will be a vital part of any biblical atonement theory. For about nine hundred years, from Irenaeus and Origen until the time of Anselm, the dominant view among Christian theologians was the so-called ransom theory of the atonement, according to which the sacrifice of Christ’s life served as a ransom to deliver mankind from bondage to Satan and from the corruption and death that are the consequences of sin. Contemporary ransom theorists recognize that the ransom price of our redemption need not be thought of as paid to Satan to secure our release from bondage. Rather the ransom price is paid to God to discharge the debt of punishment we owe to divine justice. Just as we speak of a criminal’s having “paid his debt to society” by suffering the punishment for his crime, so we may speak of Christ’s having paid the debt we owe to God. Talk of ransom is thus a metaphor for penal substitution. Ransom theories are thus not standalone theories but are a facet of an atonement theory that has penal substitution at the center.
Redemption should be augmented by other motifs such as new creation (2 Cor 5:17). Atonement from sin is a forensic transaction, which would be powerless to transform our lives without the work of the Holy Spirit in regeneration and sanctification. Legally freed from condemnation and imputed with Christ’s righteousness, we still need to be transformed by the ongoing work of the Spirit in infusing righteousness into us.
5—Moral Influence
Fourth, Christ’s death is the source of a moral influence on humanity, which helps to draw people to faith in Christ and to persevere in faith through trials and even martyrdom. According to moral influence theories, Christ’s death achieved our reconciliation with God, not by satisfying divine justice, but by moving our hearts to contrition and love as we contemplate Christ’s voluntarily embracing horrible suffering and death. Nothing actually transpired between God and man at Jesus’ crucifixion. No sins were punished, no debt paid. The entire power of the cross to make atonement lies in its exemplary force to produce a subjective impact in us.
Taken in isolation, the moral influence theory is hopeless as an atonement theory. Not only is it biblically inadequate, but it is powerless to explain, for example, how redemption is accomplished for all those believers who lived prior to the time of Christ, on whom his death had therefore no influence whatsoever. Moreover, once penal substitution has been removed, the moral influence theory becomes bizarre. In his classic work The Atonement, philosopher-theologian R. W. Dale mused, “If my brother made his way into a burning house to save my child from the flames, and were himself to perish in his heroic venture, his fate would be a wonderful proof of his affection for me and mine; but if there were no child in the house, and if I were told that he entered it and perished with no other object than to show his love for me, the explanation would be absolutely unintelligible.” Penal substitution thus lies at the heart of the moral influence of the death of Christ.
The moral influence of Christ’s self-sacrificial death on mankind is truly inestimable. Repeatedly represented figuratively in literature and graphically in art, the death of Christ has, even more than his teaching and his character, made Jesus of Nazareth an arresting and captivating person for hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people and has inspired countless people to bear with courage and faith terrible pain and even death. As mentioned earlier, it is not at all implausible that only in a world that includes such an atoning death would the optimal number of people come freely to love and know God and so to find eternal life. God’s wisdom, not only his love and holiness, is thus manifest in the atoning death of Christ.
Chapter Summary
A biblically adequate theory of the atonement will include the motifs of penal substitution, satisfaction of divine justice, redemption from bondage, and the far-reaching moral influence of Christ’s self-sacrificial love. The numerous challenges to these truths underscore the importance of profound Christian philosophy for theology.
Checklist of Basic Terms and Concepts
acceptation
atonement
consequentialist justice
definition of punishment
imputation
justification of an act of punishment
justification of the practice of punishment
justification of punishment
moral influence
negative retributivism
philosophy of law
penal substitution
positive retributivism
propitiation
ransom theory
reconciliation
redemption
representation
retributive justice
sacrifice
satisfaction
satisfaction theory
substitution
theories of the atonement
theory of justice
theory of punishment
vicarious liability