In response to some very silly books attacking Penal Substitutionary Atonement, including those by Steve Chalke and Joel Green, the Oak Hill trio of Mike Ovey, Andrew Sach and Steve Jeffrey have produced a book I am looking forward very much to reading: Pierced for our Transgressions - Rediscovering the Glory of Penal Substitutionary Atonement.
The table of contents looks fascinating: they give exhaustive answer to the many objections raised against PSA. Their account of the heritage of the doctrine is very interesting: the attacks on it have tried to relativise it by making it a product of particular medieval or renaissance conditions. (I would also say that particular conditions of modernity and the way in which we deal with criminality in our culture - ironically because of our Christian heritage - have lead to the doctrine being seen as distasteful and immoral: Foucault's Discipline and Punish is fascinating as an account for the genealogy of punishment in Western liberal society.)
However: there is a tendency in evangelicalism to make the doctrine under attack loom larger than it ought, or to make it the sine qua non of the preaching of the gospel. (PSA is not the gospel, though it is (I believe) a glorious doctrine explaining how exactly the gospel is good news.) This leads in practice to a trotting out of PSA formulae at every point, even when it isn't warranted by the text.
As
K.J. Vanhoozer writes (and his evangelical credentials are sound!):
the economy of covenantal grace is not exhausted by the logic of penal substitution even though the latter has a legitimate place.
25 comments:
I completely agree that we've made the doctrine loom larger than it ought. If I could have a dollar for every time the phrase (word for word) "Jesus died to take the penalty for our sins" is used in a sermon, I'd be a millionaire!! While it is of course a wonderful truth, it is used by us disproportionately to its use in the NT.
P.S. It's a shame, because it can start to sound trite and such a wonderful truth should never sound trite.
Yes, AND it needs very careful qualification and description...
Steve Holmes up at St And is preparing a book on the subject too. Should be interesting
What exactly do you mean by that Michael, particularly about it being qualified?
Well, some of the criticisms of the doctrine come because preachers say inaccurate things like 'God punishes Jesus', which doesn't reflect the willing obedience of the Son to accept the penalty for sin and evil... It needs Trinitarian description for starters.
Right, gotcha.
The problem is that people have tended into an "either or..." that to me seems to be the problem with Steve Chalke it's choose your own atonement model so do you want Christ winning the victory or Christ paying the ransom or Christ taking the penalty. As though you choose the one you like the best. Don't we need to be showing how these different aspects fit together. My view is you need PSA to make sense of the rest -and vice versa
You are right: the smorgasbord theory of the atonement is more than a bit silly in my opinion. Part of the problem is with the word 'theory' in the first place.
Had to write an essay at college once on: "Which theory of the atonement has the most evangelistic potential?" Where to begin picking apart the assumptions behind that question...
Michael, does the language of the Son being "punished" necessarily exclude the concept of his willing obedience. You seem to suggest an antithesis. Is there not room for both? Doesn't the use of such language is Isaiah 53 ("The punishment that... was upon him")legitimate it?
I agree it needs a careful trinitarian framework in order not to get the wrong end of the stick, but you seem to be throwing the whole stick away...
no no no. Not whole stick. Did God punish Jesus? No. Did Jesus bear our punishment? Yes. Whole stick still intact.
Michael, thanks for blogging on this topic.
I've noticed that at least 2 other evangelicals have adopted the same position as you. Both authors were prepared to say "Jesus bore our punishment" but were not prepared to say "God punished Jesus". I can understand the reasoning behind this. But after reaching this position, nothing further is said concerning God's specific role in the atonement - the particularity of the Father and Son recedes into the background and the unity and onesss of the Godhead comes to the fore. This has left me with the impression that all they are prepared to affirm is (effectively) that God endured the punishment of God.
I've always had a bit of difficulty with this move. Do we need to shift our focus from the persons of the Trinity to the oneness of God to arrive at a Biblical formulation of the atonement?
I may be mistaken but I would have thought that "Abba, Father ... Remove this cup from me", "I will strike the shepherd" and “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” all seem to shed some light on God's (ie the Father's) particular role in the atonement. Is that fair?
I'm not sure I understand the problem with "God punished Jesus" if we take it to mean the Triune God (or even God the Father) punished God the Son who willingly bore the punishment for sin? God did not punish Jesus but Jesus bore our punishment seems very odd to me? Please would you explain a bit more and point us to people who've said this in print?
I think Pierced For Our Transgressions is going to say that particular / limited / effectual atonemnet is essential for a coherent understanding of penal substitution, by the way, so it'll be interesting to see what people make of its arguments.
Yes. And I think they will be in error on that! Partly, I guess, because they will be seeking to impose a coherence that isn't necessarily available to us. But I will read it and see.
There is all the difference between 'God punished Jesus' and 'Jesus bore the punishment'.
Was the Father angry at the Son? Or angry at us? I take it he was not angry at the Son, because the Son was innocent. He was pleased with the Son, in fact...
I am thinking hard about ron's very good points!
I
Hmm: also, what about the chastisement of the Davidic king in 2 Samuel 7? Might not fit very well with my side of the case, though what is envisaged there is not so much expiatory punishment but restorative discipline...
no no no. Not whole stick. Did God punish Jesus? No. Did Jesus bear our punishment? Yes. Whole stick still intact.
A good post Michael and a good discussion; sorry to have been away from it (grant deadline time with the Australian Research Council).
I have just gone reading in 2nd Samuel (in my trusty NASB) and been enjoying it thoroughly: I have been away too long. But how is 2 Sam 7:14-15 such a big deal for this point of doctrine? I'm missing your concern.
Returning to the main thread: one shouldn't underestimate the damage that lack of proportion can cause in these matters. I have seen educated Christian people equating salvation with belief in penal substitutionary atonement and believe me, you do not want to go there. And the world seems littered with sensitive types who were disgusted at some point or other by a strident and vulgar presentation of this doctrine. I can remember an especially distressing instance at a school assembly, eight hundred of us out on the bitumen at Eastwood Public, my little Jewish mate not excepted --- and we were all of ten? eleven? --- as though it was yesterday, and my age-inappropriate little mind saying this cannot be the whole story ...
This has not been a stumbling block for me personally, but I am one of those people who read Gunton's The Actuality of Atonement and thought Oh! So that's what's been missing all this time ...
Is this the old rationality logical inference thing again?
God was angry at the elect in the Son, and hence both at us and at the Son-in-his-union-with-sinners (who are joined to him by faith in the Spirit)?
Obviously God was always well pleased with his Son as Son and one might almost say the Son's obedience to death especially pleased the Father.
The old rationality logical inference thing?
or orli for short...?
what the..?
What I meant by "orli" is that there are some people (pro-orli) who think that the Bible teaches all that what it says logically entails and that we can have a pretty good stab at working out what some of that is whereas some people (anti-orli) think that you've got to have a text that explicitly states something to be able to believe it with any degree of confidence. Or do I caricature?
The pro-orli's would be much more inclined to logical distinction and argument (e.g. in thinking through the particular redemption involved in the atonement or the relationship beteen the person and natures of Christ or the Trinity) whereas the antis would want to stick to texts and would more quickly say that we just cant know?
If you don't say 'God punished Jesus' but you do say 'Jesus bore our punishment' then I'm afraid that the question I'm left asking is 'Who did punish Jesus then?' I'm sure you're not trying to imply that any other agency (Satan, for instance) was involved but that strikes me as another potential flaw in that language.
I think God did punish Jesus because I think the way that atonement works is both substitutionary and representative. Jesus is my federal head, so his punishment extends to me. But it must his be punishment for that to work.
Marc I'm all in favour of rationality, logic, inference, and a respect for what Scripture actually says. And so, um, yes, I do think your marking out of two opposed positions here is something of a cartoon.
If I were being driven crazy by someone demanding prooftexts all the time I might say something rhetorical like "Scripture teaches everything that its words logically entail", but as mentioned elsewhere I think this sort of hairy-chested talk is unhepful. Well, of course Scripture does. But that's not the question. The formula implies that it's straightforward to identify the words of Scripture, what they mean, and what logic is appropriate --- and it isn't, or at least, not in general. (I don't mean that the text of Scripture is uncertain, since almost all of it isn't; I mean, which words are relevant?) There's no substitute for just having the argument, and unless one is using Scripture and some appropriate form of reasoning then something is wrong.
But in responding to Ros' statement If you don't say 'God punished Jesus' but you do say 'Jesus bore our punishment' then I'm afraid that the question I'm left asking is 'Who did punish Jesus then?', I think the best answer is to open the NT to The Letter to the Hebrews and start reading. Point one, here the metaphor of sacrifice is dominant, not of judicial process. Point two, Jesus is himself the High Priest which does kind of complicate the notion of sacrifice specifically, or of something being done to Jesus more generally (and please notice that the Lord's life is a part of the purification and sacrifice as such; it's not all about the hours of the Passion). And just to be clear that the writer is on board with this use of the material, here are some prooftexts: 7:26-28, 9:11-14, 10:11-14, where Christ is unambiguously active in the process.
If one is forced to come up with a single statement, and it must be in judicial language, then I think "Jesus bore our punishment" can probably survive interrogation by these other texts. But I don't see how "God punished Jesus" can. And if that means that something is wrong with the framework that gets you to that point, well, so be it.
Wow, thanks guys. Interesting stuff!
Bruce has expressed very well what I mean by the diffference between the two statements.
As for orli or no: that is an extremely complex little issue of its own! Suffice it to say: when does rational inference become the speculation which Calvin poured so much polemic against? And: which rationality ought we to choose in joining the dots?
Hi Michael,
Good questions.
Dt 29:29 a fav. verse on (1)
I'm not entirely sure I understand the second question, though! What would you see as some of the options? If its just person X's or person Y's I'm not sure I see the probelm? I would have thought things like logical sylogism if... then... and the idea of mutually exclusive alternatives would get us quite a long way?
Yes, Dt 29.29: love it!
Well: I ain't real thought out on this or on other things, as you may have noticed! BUT: it seems to me that what Ricoeur calls 'narrative logic' is an entirely different entity to the syllogistic logic deployed at times in theological thought. Not that 1+1 suddenley equates to 3, but that the revelation of God should be allowed as far as possible to emit its own 'logic', a logic in which while there may not be square circles, there can be a divine man and a resurrection from the dead...
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