The Theology of the Cross as an Answer to the Problem of Evil

The Old Testament can be read as one long debate about the problem of evil and unjust suffering. It begins by declaring in the law that God will keep his people from suffering if they only follow and obey. If anyone is suffering, it declares, this is because they have sinned and been unfaithful. Then along comes books like the Psalms, Ecclesiastes, and Job where this law is questioned. They complain that they are suffering unjustly. These books call God to task, saying "I am suffering, yet I have been faithful. What's going on?! Why are you letting this happen? This is wrong!"

In short, the question "Why would an all-powerful and good God allow evil?" did not originate with atheism, rather it originated way before that in the pages of the Hebrew Scriptures. It is a part of our sacred texts. If we understand the Psalms as examples of prayers and worship, then asking that kind of heart-wrenching question filled with desperation and pain and anger is... an act of worship. It is a part of the liturgy of prayer. Selah.

Now that kind of protest-as-worship is quite different from the common religious response to the question of "Why would an all-powerful and good God allow evil?" (which is known as the question of "theodicy"). Here the focus is typically on maintaining the all-powerful side of things at the expense of love and goodness. Explanations will be given as to why what seems to be horrific and devastatingly bad is in fact good and loving. It's all part of a bigger plan, you see. These arguments attempt to tell us how it is somehow "loving" to allow this horrible thing in order to preserve the idea that God is in control.

It's easy to understand why the stress is placed on keeping the all-powerful part. We want desperately to believe that things are under control. We need to believe that. But consider the history of the Israelites: They were enslaved by Egypt. God liberated them, and they had a moment in the sun, but then they were put under the thumb of Assyria, and then Babylon, then Persia, then Greece, and finally under Rome. Basically they were passed as the spoils of war from one conquering nation to the next for generations upon generations. This is a people who know suffering.

The prophets told them that this was because of their unfaithfulness, and if they would just repent then all this suffering would stop. So they did repent, and the temple was rebuilt. But they were still under enemy rule (at the time of the rebuilding of the second temple they were under Persian rule if you're keeping score here).

So consider that history and put yourself in the shoes of a Jewish first century follower of Jesus the Messiah (in Greek: "the Christ"). The idea was that the messiah would be a warrior-king like David. The hope was that the messiah would come and restore Israel to power, and the unjust suffering of Gentile oppression of so many long years would finally stop.

Now, put yourself at the cross. The one that you had hoped would end all the injustice you and your family and your people have suffered for so long is being shamed and tortured and killed before your eyes. Jesus is dying, and all your hopes in God to make things right and good are dying with him on that cross. 

The reaction of the disciples was to run and hide. Jürgen Moltmann has said, “Christians who do not have the feeling that they must flee the crucified Christ have probably not yet understood him in a sufficiently radical way.”

Along those same lines, let me say this: Most Christians do not understand the implications of the cross.  Most Christians still hold to what Luther called a "theology of glory." Luther declares, "A theology of glory calls evil good and good evil. A theology of the cross calls the thing what it actually is." That's exactly what we experience with typical apologetic responses to the problem of evil. We are told that what seems to be evil is actually good, and we just need to trust God's wisdom here. 

A theology of the cross does not do that. A theology of the cross begins by facing the reality of human suffering head-on. It speaks to those who are in a place of suffering and begins by saying "this suffering you are experiencing is painful and bad. It is not good. It is not deserved. It seeks to offer support and love and compassion, but no matter how much love and goodness may come after this, it does not change the fact that this bad thing really is bad.

Jesus shows us how God enters into our world of suffering and becomes a victim of unjust suffering. That is the crucified God, and that understanding of God completely changes how we understand who God is. It kills the understanding of a God of power and control. Because of this, Moltmann says “Only a Christian can be a good atheist.” What he means is that to call the crucified God "Lord" is to declare that the God of power, the God of Caesar, the God of empire, and indeed the God of Christiandom... is not. 

That God of power is an idol. It is an attractive idol to be sure. Of course we want to believe that God is in control, and that bad things can't happen to us if we are good. But as much as I wish it were not the case, bad things do happen to good people.

What's more, when we go to those who are suffering, seeking to show love and help, this can hurt us. Working with the poor and oppressed may sound romantic, but that's not reality. The fact is, it hurts to share in the grief and pain of another. The word compassion means literally "co-pain" and there's a lot of truth in that. We know a guy who volunteered to help victims following a natural disaster. Years later he is still dealing with the trauma that resulted from what he experienced there. He insists he would do it all over again, but the trauma he now carries from it is still real. He carries those scars, scars born of compassion.

The answer to the problem of evil that we see in the God revealed on the cross is one that calls us to join with those who suffer. That's hard, and carries a cost. It does not come offering explanations, but offering our lives, our selves. It is an image of God who carries scars, and who asks us to love like that, too.

It's been said that the greatest act of courage is found in losing everything worth living for, and deciding nevertheless to live. The reason that I hold to the theology of the cross is because it can face the hard reality of our broken and unjust world and still allow me to hold on to trust and hope and, most of all, hold on to love. We as humans need to hold on to love. 

Jesus, on the night before his death, ate a last meal with his disciples. He told them he was going away, but stressed that they were not being abandoned. He told them they would suffer too, "in this world you will have trouble, but take heart, for I have overcome the world" (John 16:33). That is the tension we need to live in: Suffering happens, especially when we love greatly, but somehow we need to hold on to our trust in goodness and love despite it. That is the courageous balancing act of trusting in love in our broken world, trusting in the crucified God. 

Most of all Jesus asked his friends to promise him that when he was gone they would love each other as he had loved them. The way we can truly answer the problem of evil in our world is by learning how to do that. So when you encounter suffering, don't explain, don't justify. But as Paul says, remain in these three things--trust, hope, and love, and the greatest of these is love.

Luther's Works Complete Tables of Contents and Cross Listing

It's quite difficult to sort out the massive collection of Luther's Works. Of the 55 volumes of the American edition (LW), vol 49 alone contains 119 titles! So I created a complete table of contents for all 55 volumes with cross references to their sources in the Weimar critical edition (WA). To my knowledge this is not available any where in print, certainly not in digital (i.e. searchable) form.

The table of contents of the 105 volume Weimar Ausgabe (WA) is provided as well. I am in the process of cataloging the full contents of each volume. So far I have completed vols 1-20 of "Schriften".

Finally, I have also provided Concordia's listing of works by Luther not yet translated into English (LW2). Because the list is digital and thus searchable, I hope this will provide a useful resource for Luther research.

Check it out here:

Luther's Works Complete Tables of Contents and Cross Listing

Luther on temptation and beer

"Be strong and of good courage, and by all means throw aside these monstrous thoughts. Whenever the devil vexes you with these thoughts, seek the company of others, or drink more, joke, make nonsense, or engage in some other form of merriment. Sometimes one must drink more, joke, make nonsense, and even commit some sin in defiance and contempt of the devil in order not to give him an opportunity to make us scrupulous about trifles."

-Martin Luther, Letter to Jerome Weller: On the Devil, July 1530

God's Alien Justice (redux)

This is a redux of an earlier post. I added a lot more detail, and refined some of the arguments. So I thought I would re-post this rather than just editing the old one.

Romans 3:21-26 is a key text for proponents of penal substitution. I want to look here at a key term that Paul uses in this passage: the Greek word δικαιοσύνη (dikaiosynē) which can be translated as either "justice" or "righteousness".

Dikaiosynē is the same word the LXX (the Greek translation of the Old Testament used by the authors of the New Testament) uses to translate the Hebrew צְדָקָה (tsedaqah) in the Old Testament, which likewise can be rendered in English either as righteousness or justice. It stands to reason that Paul, being a Hebrew, has the conceptual idea of the Hebrew tsedaqah in mind when he speaks of dikaiosynē in Greek. In other words, his concept of justice/righteousness is based on a conception of justice based on the Bible rather than on a pagan Greek or Roman understanding. In Hebrew, the central word for “justice” is משׁפט (mishpat). Our term tsedaqah in contrast is almost always translated as “righteousness” in the OT. That’s because the connotation of tsedaqah is not justice in the sense of deciding, or in the sense of consequence, but in the sense of goodness. In the OT, tsedaqah justice is an idea rooted in the Character of God, like when we say that a king is “just,” and mean that he is good and fair. In the Old Testament, the concept of tsedaqah has to do with balancing things out again, making things right, in particular with caring for the poor and oppressed. Today, the word tsedaqah justice/righteousness is associated in Judaism with acts of charity, and many Jewish charities are often named “tsedaqah” (modern Hebrew would transliterate this as tzedakah, whereas I’m using the SBL standard for biblical Hebrew here for my transliterations) So tsedaqah justice means restorative justice rather than retributive justice.

This understanding of restorative social justice was key to Martin Luther's breakthrough where he rediscovered the Gospel in Romans. Like everyone else at the time, he had been reading the Bible in Latin, which for several hundred years had been the only translation available. The word for justice in Latin here is iustitia which is the word our own “justice” derives from. In Latin, because of the focus on Roman law, the word iustitia had come to refer to a quid-pro-quo payback justice. So Luther, reading his Bible in Latin had assumed that the passage in Romans 3 was about retributive justice. Today when we read the word Justice often have a similar connotation because of how our society defines justice in this same Jack Bauer payback type of way. A big thing Luther did was to emphasize the importance of reading the Bible in its original languages, an idea he called ad fontes which is Latin for back to the sources. Getting back to the orginal Greek and Hebrew allowed Luther to figure out that the righteousness that Paul was speaking of was so different from the one from his own German-Roman legal based one that he called it an “alien righteousness” (iustitia aliena). It was an idea that turned his world on his head, and led him to re-discover grace. We also need to get back to source of the original terms: the Greek dikaiosynē standing for the Hebrew idea of tsedaqah justice.

With that background in mind, let’s take a look at the passage from Romans 3, keeping in mind the meaning of dikaiosynē as restorative making-things-right justice, and of the related verb dikaios as “making right” as in the idea of righting a wrong.

"But now a loving restoration (dikaiosynē) from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify . This loving restoration (dikaiosynē) from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are set right (dikaioō) freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented him as the one who would turn aside his wrath, taking away sin through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his loving restoration (dikaiosynē) because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— he did it to demonstrate his loving restoration (dikaiosynē) at the present time, so as to be righteously loving (dikaios) and the one who lovingly sets right (dikaioō) those who have faith in Jesus (Rom 3:21-26).

Or how about this rendering:

"But now a goodness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify . This goodness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are made good freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented him as the one who would turn aside his wrath, taking away sin through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his goodness, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— he did it to demonstrate his goodness at the present time, so as to be good and the one who makes good those who have faith in Jesus.

In that context, the idea of Christ here “turning away wrath” is not because he is punished, but because he makes us (dikaios) good/righteous. Because Jesus “takes away sin by faith in his blood” we are made good. We are made right again. As a result, God’s wrath is “turned away” because the cause of that wrath was sin, and since sin has been removed, so has the cause of wrath.

In contrast, if the above is read (as it had been by Anselm and so many others in the Latin church who did not have access to the original Greek) as iustitia retributive justice, that one can easily read into the above text the idea of penal substitution. Like this:

But now a righteousness (dikaiosynē) from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness (dikaiosynē) from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified (dikaioō) freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice (dikaiosynē), because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— he did it to demonstrate his justice (dikaiosynē) at the present time, so as to be just (dikaios) and the one who justifies (dikaioō) those who have faith in Jesus”

This is how the NIV translates the passage. Did you notice that they switch terms? Check out the highlighted words: They begin by translating dikaiosynē as “righteousness” and then switch to translating it as “justice”. Even through the Greek word group dikaiosynē, dikaioō, dikaios is the same throughout (all coming form the root word dikē ), they translate the verb dikaioō as justify, and the adjective dikaios as just. This changes how this passage sounds to us. Now it reads as if we are made righteous by God’s demonstration of (retributive) justice which turns aside his wrath. But if we are really paying attention, that is not what is being said.

Really, its not so much a problem with a translation (I usually like the NIV), but much more about ur own concept of what justice is about. In America, with our politicians and TV shows always talking about “bringing someone to justice” in the sense of hurting them, we really need to re-think the alien justice found in the New Testament.

Why I'm still not Orthodox (besides the silly hats)

Pretty much all of my theology is very much in line with the Eastern Orthodox church. For example I have an understanding of sin as bondage and sickness rather than as transgression. As a result, I have an Orthodox 'transformative' understanding of salvation rather than a Western 'judicial' one, meaning that the real object of salvation is God effecting an inner change in us. Again, the model of atonement I have is an Orthodox one of recapitulation, rather than appeasement. In other words, the need for the atonement was not to satisfy a need God had for punishment, but rather to recreate in us the image of God that we had lost, and to free us from the bondage of sin. I also share with the Orthodox church the focus on theosis - our participation in the divine life which changes us into the likeness of Christ. In that sense I see salvation not as a one time act, but as a growing relationship with God. I also think the Orthodox church is right in their understanding of original sin, not as inherited guilt, but as our inheriting the consequences of living in a sinful world.

So if I agree with the Orthodox church on original sin, recapitulation, theosis, and the relational transformative focus of salvation, why am I not Eastern Orthodox? Besides my not liking silly hats, tacky bling-bling, and zz-top beards of course (see the above picture). There are a few reasons. the biggest one is that I feel my roots are deeply in the Evangelical church. That same focus on transformation and theosis can be found in Wesley, and it can be found in Luther too. Luther writes that God pours Christ into us so that "he is entirely humanized (vermenschet) and we are entirely divinized (vergottet)". A clear expression of theosis. As a result Luther says in his Commentary on Galatians, salvation entails a real change in us, not just a legal one, "These changes are, so to speak, not verbal; they are real. They produce a new mind, a new will, new senses, and even new actions by the flesh." As I've argued before, I also believe that Luther represents one of the most clear and lucid expression of the Orthodox understanding of Christus Victor out there. So everything that the Orthodox church says, I also see as being completely compatible with Evangelicalism, particularly the central thrust of Evangelicalism rooted in Lutheran Pietism, revivalist Methodism, and the relational-transformative focus of Pentecostalism. That 'Pentecostal-flavored' branch of Evangelicalism is without a doubt (ie statistically) the largest and fastest growing part of Evangelicalism world-wide. What it is at odds with (as am I) is a certain brand of Calvinism. But that's a big can of worms I don't want to open right here. What I want to focus on is Orthodoxy.

I think by biggest beef with the Orthodox church (beside those hats which I just can't seem to get over) is their lack of focus on being born again. Luther (and Wesley) stress both our need for justification, and our need for sanctification (which is the same as theosis). That means that while we do need to enter into a life-long transformative relationship with God (sanctification), we need to enter into that relationship. Leaving that out is like talking about the importance of married life, but never mentioning the need to get married. And even bigger than that, it is absolutely essential that we know that the whole point of theosis - and I mean here an Orthodox understanding of theosis - is that it is not done through our works, but through grace. We need to be sanctified through God living and working in us. That is not something that we work our way into. The whole point of getting "saved" from this transformative model is that God enters into our lives and embraces us unconditionally (that's what grace means). We need to enter into that relationship with the God who is there, active, communicative, and real.

Yes, the focus needs to be on relationship, instead of on a legal transaction. Yes, this means an ongoing transforming relationship, and not a one time experience. Yes there are many experiences in that deepening relationship with God beyond conversion. Yes, yes, yes. But if may speak personally, I was not raised to know God, and I did not know that you can really know God's love first hand in a living relationship. When I encountered Christ it turned my world upside-down. So I'm really big on conversion. Not on making people feel guilty or bad, (that's where I think Luther and Wesley get it wrong), but on letting people know that they can really know God personally, that they don't need to work and strive to get there, but that God can enter into their lives and change everything, because being loved does that to you. God loves us in all of our brokenness and ugliness and lostness, and that experience of being loved by the God of the universe changes everything, it changes you.

Now while that relational-ontological experience of conversion is so much in line with the Orthodox big picture of salvation, that experience is something I just never hear the Orthodox church speak about. I don't ever hear it preached, I don't encounter it in any of their theology. If anything I hear it being de-emphasized, denied, and rejected, usually in the form of rejecting a cartoon caricature of the worst and most trivial form Evangelical conversion. But the very fact that their understanding of conversion is only in this negative cliche form does reveal a lack of a deep first-hand understanding of that experience.

Now I don't want to say that this silence means that this experience is not a reality for the Orthodox. But I do want to break the silence. It really does not make any sense. It's absence is completely at odds with the whole thrust of their own theology. And it is a non-negotiable deal-breaker. There are other things that bug me too - their lack of healthy self-criticism (this is changing), that women are excluded from leadership (this is not), and yes, those goofy hats. But above all I see the biggest lack in their silence about justification - about our need to enter into a relationship with God through being born again.

check out part 2

Wesleyan Holiness

I've been reading though Wesley's sermons, trying to get an idea of his theology. If Luther's gift to us was the idea of justification by faith, then Wesley's gift was the idea of regeneration and the new birth. But Wesley puts a particular spin on being born again that is in many ways good, and in some ways bad. His focus is on holiness. First of all I deeply appreciate this focus and think that we evangelicals desperately need to learn about social justice, compassion, and living in grace. We have in the past divorced our faith from social engagement and been advocates for the establishment and powers that be rather than the least. So Wesley's focus on personal and social holiness - a deep vibrant personal faith coupled with compassion and care for the needy and love for our enemies - so something we can learn a lot from.

What I question is Wesley's focus on holiness rather than on relationship. I appreciate Wesley's drive to seek to be holy and loving, but I question his notion that this in fact the central aim of religion. I would say that the central aim is in fact relationship, and the holiness is subordinate to and the product of a relationship with God. It is crucial that a genuine relationship with God leads to us loving others as a fruit of the genuineness of our relationship. I am concerned however that by his putting the focus on works of holiness and thus in many ways having a focus on performance and law that Wesley is giving us an incorrect and unrealistic focus on holiness over relationship that reflects his own particular perfectionist personality (and that of his mother) rather than the thrust of the New Testament.

Said differently, it seems that Wesley was always driven towards works of holiness and that his relational encounter with God was focused on assurance and relationship with God through the indwelling of the Spirit, but that he was continually drawn to seek holiness. First in thinking that the new birth would result in his immediate and total sanctification and then after he discovered he was mistake, in his continual preaching and striving towards holiness. In the same way that Luther really only and always talks about faith and not works, Wesley only and always talks about holiness. As I've said, there are many good things about this seeking after holiness especially when it means seeking to love God and others, but it also strikes me as a weakness of Wesley's as well, a drive that can become a foil possibly leading to legalism and a lack of compassion for those who are fallen. Just as Luther's drive and constant need for justification lead him to great heights, so did Wesley's drive, but Luther's drive was also an occation for the devil to continually torment him. A thorn in his flesh that continually prodded him to be dependent on grace. We might say that "genius has its origin in neurosis".

I think it is vital that we keep in mind that driving passion, both is good parts and its bad parts that lie behind the great theologians so that we can have a theology that takes into account their real human striving and struggles, rather that one that systematizes their thoughts into an abstract system of doctrine. I think this approach is very much in keeping with the raw passion of Luther and the experiential and practical faith of Wesley.

God's justice

Last blog I talked about Romans 3 and the pivotal verse of Romans 3:25. This time I want to look at a key term that Paul uses in this passage: the Greek word δικαιοσύνη (dikaiosunē) which is translated as either "justice" or "righteousness".

Dikaiosunē is the same word the LXX uses to translate the Hebrew צדקה(t'sedeka) in the Old Testament which likewise can be translated either as righteousness or justice. Because the LXX was the official translation the New Testament authors used to quote from the Old Testament, it follows that Paul was thinking of t'sedeka justice in Romans when he used the word dikaiosunē . There are many words for justice in Hebrew, and among them t'sedeka justice refers specifically to setting things right. T'sedeka justice/righteousness is associated with acts of charity, and today Jewish charities are often named t'sedeka which has become synonemous with charity.

This understanding of restorative social justice was key to Martin Luther's breakthrough where he rediscovered the Gospel in Romans. Like everyone else he had been reading the Bible in Latin which for several hundred years had been the only translation available. The word for justice in Latin here is iustitio which is the word our own “justice” derives from. In Latin iustitio refers to a quid-pro-quo payback justice, so Luther (as many people today) had assumed that the passage in Romans 3 was about retributive justice. But in the original Greek, and especially considering Paul's own Jewish roots, this was not at all the sense of t'sedeka/dikaiosunē justice. Take a look at the passage, keeping in mind the meaning of dikaiosunē as restorative making-things-right justice.

"But now a dikaiosunē (loving restoration) from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify . This dikaiosunē (loving restoration) from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are dikaioō (set right) freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented him as the one who would turn aside his wrath, taking away sin through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his dikaiosunē (loving restoration), because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— he did it to demonstrate his dikaiosunē (loving restoration) at the present time, so as to be dikaios(righteously loving) and the one who dikaioō (lovingly sets right) those who have faith in Jesus.

We can see that if the above is read (as it had been by Anselm and Aquinas and so many others in the latin church who did not have access to the original Greek) as iustitio retributive justice, that one can easily read into the above text the idea of penal substitution. Which is why Luther's discovery was so earth shaking. It completely revolutionized his understanding of what grace was about: t'sedeka/dikaiosunē justice.

Romans 3:25

One of the pivotal verses for penal substitution is Romans 3:25 "Christ Jesus, whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood" (Ro 3:25a KJV). Proponents of penal substitution take this to mean that God's wrath is turned aside because Jesus is punished in our place. I've posted earlier on the word translated here as propitiation in the King James. In this post we'll take a look at the passage in the context of Paul's line of argument in Romans, drawing a good deal on Martin Luther's thoughts as well. Let's back up to verse 21 (I'll switch over here to NIV just because it is more readable, feel free to follow along in any version you like):

“But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify.” (Ro 3:21 NIV)

As I outlined in a previous blog on Luther's Theology of the Cross, Alister McGrath talks about Luther's "turmerlebnis" where he rediscovered the Gospel of grace in Paul. Luther's discovery revolved around a revelation about the meaning of the term "righteousness of God" here. Luther had been taught to understand the righteousness of God in the punitive sense of a quid pro quo retributive justice which pays us what we deserve. This is the same assumption of penal substitution. Luther's breakthrough was when he discovered that the righteousness of God Paul speaks of here is not about retributive justice that metes out what we deserve judicially, but on that is “apart from law” where God justifies sinners. In other words, it is not a matter of God meting out punishment or reward, but God “making right”.

Let's return to our key verse Romans 3:25. The Greek word hilasterion here can be translated as either “expiate” (which implies cleansing sin) or “propitiate” (which implies appeasing wrath). C.H. Dodd famously argued that in pagan Greek literature the word hilasterion referred to placating an offended person, but that in the LXX (the Greek translation of the Old Testament that the writers of the New Testament used) hilasterion was used in the sense of purifying, canceling, cleansing, and forgiving sin. In other words, the focus was not on the sacrifice changing God's attitude through mollification, but on changing us by removing or cleansing our sin. As a result of Dodd's research, the Revised Standard Version translates Romans 3:25 as "whom God put forward as an expiation by his blood".

Leon Morris challenged Dodd's linguistic argument saying that the main thrust of Paul's argument up to that point in Romans had been focused on the problem of wrath, and so the solution outlined in Romans 3:25 had to present a solution to the problem of wrath. Morris is right of course that this is the thrust of Paul's argument, but this does not undo Dodd's observations about the meaning of the Hebrew sacrifices. So how can we put this all together? Let's read on in Romans 3:25, the verse continues,

“...He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished — he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.” (Ro 3:25b-26 NIV)

God had held back punishing of sin in order to demonstrate his justice. Throughout the Psalms and Prophets we hear people crying out to God things like “how long will you look upon evil? Help us in our oppression and save!”. God punishing evildoers was in that context seen as a good thing because it meant God defending you and punishing them. But Paul argues in Romans that this way of thinking is a death trap because we "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Ro 3:23), meaning here that sin is not a matter of us and them, we good people and those sinners over there, but that we all have been a part of the hurt. God held back that judgment we had cried out for because he wanted to reveal instead a righteousness that was apart from the law of reaping and sewing. Instead he wanted to break us out of the whole cycle of an eye for an eye. But how?

Following both Morris and Dodd's insights we can say that Paul is arguing that we all have played a part in hurt and injustice. But God held back the world of hurt that we had coming to us, and instead offered himself in Christ as a sacrifice that would cleanse us of the cancer of sin in us (Dodd's expiation). With the problem of sin removed from us through Christ, the just reason for wrath is also removed. God is not appeased in the sense of someone covering his eye's or gratifying his anger (as if God's anger was a fleshly rage), rather by solving the problem of sin in us, God has removed the cause of wrath and brought us into right relationship with him, as Paul says, "so that God is just and the one who justifies sinners" (sets them aright).



The NIV has the most accurate reading putting together first of all the sense of hilasterion being the translation of the Hebrew "kipper" referring to the mercy seat of the Arc, so that verse 25 reads "God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement", but in a footnote the NIV combines both the idea of expiation and propitiation together, blending both Morris and Dodd's insights into the idea of the Temple sacrifice, "as the one who would turn aside his wrath, taking away sin". With that in mind let's look at the whole passage. I'll use the NIV and substitute in the alternative reading in the footnote above. My comments are in parenthesis:

"But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify (a way to set us right different from the way of payback). This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (sin is not just in "them over there" but in all of us) , and are justified (set right) freely by his grace through the redemption (liberation out of slavery) that came by Christ Jesus. God presented him as the one who would turn aside his wrath, taking away sin (note the pattern of removal of sin leading to wrath being turned) through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus. (In this we get the justice and help we have cried out for, not in a violent wrath on our enemies, but in all of us near and far being set right through God's sacrifice in Christ).

We can see this sense expressed very clearly in The Message. The above passage there reads:

"What Moses and the prophets witnessed to all those years has happened. The God-setting-things-right that we read about has become Jesus-setting-things-right for us. And not only for us, but for everyone who believes in him. For there is no difference between us and them in this. Since we've compiled this long and sorry record as sinners (both us and them) and proved that we are utterly incapable of living the glorious lives God wills for us, God did it for us. Out of sheer generosity he put us in right standing with himself. A pure gift. He got us out of the mess we're in and restored us to where he always wanted us to be. And he did it by means of Jesus Christ. God sacrificed Jesus on the altar of the world to clear that world of sin. Having faith in him sets us in the clear. God decided on this course of action in full view of the public—to set the world in the clear with himself through the sacrifice of Jesus, finally taking care of the sins he had so patiently endured. This is not only clear, but it's now—this is current history! God sets things right. He also makes it possible for us to live in his rightness."

Luther's Theology of the Cross pt 2 abscondita sub contrariis

While both proponents of Penal Substitution and Christus Victor would like to claim Luther as an advocate of each theory, in fact Luther's theology of the cross takes both to such new levels that one would have to say that Luther developed his own theology of the cross. Paul Fiddes has suggested that instead of calling it a "Theology of the Cross" it should be thought of as a "Theology from the Cross" because rather than beginning with a natural understanding of justice as Satisfaction theory does with Anselm and reasoning from there what God's values must be, a "Theology from the Cross" begins with the scandal and failure of the cross as God's own self-revelation. As terrible as this may at first seem - "a stumbling block" and "foolishness" Paul calls it - this is where we must begin.

While most people think of the 95 Theses of Luther as being his most pivotal writing, in fact while this was perhaps the catalyst to the Reformation, Luther's Heidelberg Dispute is much more formative to the pillars of Reform teaching. In there he again lists a series of theses, there Luther writes:

19. That person does not deserve to be called a theologian who looks upon the invisible things of God as though they were clearly perceptible in those things which have actually happened [Rom. 1.20].

20. He deserves to be called a theologian, however, who comprehends the visible and manifest things of God seen through suffering and the cross

Alistar Mcgrath points out (along with many others) that the phrase "visible and manifest things of God" is a severe mistranslation. The Latin (the original language) is "visibilia et posteriora Dei" which means literally "the visible posterior things of God" or if you will "God's butt". This is a reference to how Moses could not see God's face and live but instead saw His backside. Luther's understanding is that God's revelation is "hidden under its opposite" (abscondita sub contrariis) so that God's glory is revealed in the shame and humiliation of the cross; God's justice comes through (and despite) the injustice of the cross; God's victory comes though the failure of the cross. Life comes through death. Winning through losing.

As Christians we often forget that the Roman cross is not outwardly a symbol of hope, but of death, oppression, injustice, and accursedness. There is a reason that the disciples all fled the cross, and as Juergen Moltmann (who has more than any other in the 20th century expanded on the "Theology from the Cross") has said

"Christians who do not have the feeling that they must flee the crucified Christ have not yet understood him in a sufficiently radical way"

Luther speaks of the "opus alienum" and the "opus proprium", actions that are alien to God such as wrath over against actions that belong to his nature such as mercy. Again in the Heidelberg Disputation he writes,

"Thus an action which is alien to God's nature results in an action which belongs to his nature: God makes a person a sinner in order to make him righteous" (HD, proof 16)

Wrath is not an end in itself, nor is it God's primary concern. It is in fact alien to his nature Luther says, but through wrath God brings about salvation.

There is I think a lot of profound insight in this theology from the scandal of the cross. The task would be how to appropriate this so as to on the one hand not water it down, but on the other hand to have it not advocate self-hatred or abuse leding to death but to lead us to life through the valley of the shadow of death. When we have the courage to face our own darkness and ugliness we can meet Jesus at the foot of the cross, because as Luther says, God loves

“Sinners are beautiful because they are loved, they are not loved because they are beautiful.” (HD, proof 28)

Luther's theology of the Cross - pt 1 Justification

Luther's Stein asks...

"So Shark, How do you understand Justification and the legal motifs apart from a penal-substitution model?"

I was planning on going into this with Luther, so I thought I would answer this comment in a post. I've been reading Alister McGrath's "Luther's Theology of the Cross" which I highly recommend. In it he talks about Luther's struggle with the law. Penal Substitution has its foundation in a judicial understanding of justice based on a punishment and reward system. As Luther says

"I had hated that phrase 'the righteousness of God' which according to the use and custom of the doctors I had been taught to understand philosophically... by which God is righteous and punished unrighteous sinners" (Luthers Werke Wiemar Ed. 54.185.12)

Luther goes on to say that

"I did not love, and in fact I hated that righteous God who punished sinners...I was angry with God...I drove myself mad with a desperate disturbed conscience". (Ibid)

Because his understanding of justice, which he had inherited from the 500 years since Anselm was one based on a criminal law understanding of justice. Luther describes this kind of justice as a "tyrant". In his commentary on Galatians Luther writes

"Did the Law ever love me? Did the Law ever sacrifice itself for me? Did the Law ever die for me? On the contrary, it accuses me, it frightens me, it drives me crazy”

Luther's breakthrough of finding grace was in discovering that the justice that Paul speaks of was not in the legal sense of punishement but in the Hebrew sense of "making things right". Hence Paul speaks of "justification" which means "setting something right". A justice based on our own performance (works) is a death trap. But a justice that originates from God's goodness through faith means that God sets things right in our lives when we open our lives to him. The first is legal and in conflict with mercy. It sees justice as punishing (active) and mercy as leniency (inaction). That later biblical justice is in contrast about "making things right" and comes through acts of mercy as seen in the ministry of Jesus who came to establish justice in us though acts of healing and restoration. In this there is no conflict between justice and mercy becasue restorative justice comes through acts of mercy. Luther again:

"I began to understand that 'righteousness of God' ...to refer to a passive righteousness by which the merciful God justifies us by faith...this immediately made me feel feel as if I was born again, a though I had entered through open gates into paradise itself. From that moment the whole face of Scripture appeared to me in a different light...and now where I had once hated that phrase the phrase 'the righteousness of God' so much I began to love and extol it as the sweetest of words" (Luthers Werke, Op Sit)

So rather than reading the idea of justice in the legal sense of punishing, we need to read with Luther the idea of justification and justice in relational terms as God setting things right, as him through mercy breaking us out of the shackles of performance and law. God did not do this by "satisfying the demands of law" as Penal Substitution would say, but by "nailing the law to the cross" (Col 2:14) by overcoming it along with sin, condemnation, wrath, and the devil and putting all of these tyrants under Christ so that they would no longer oppress us and keep us from life, but serve us and point to the God of grace. In a nutshell we could say that biblical justice is about restorative justice not punitive justice. Punitive justice is the consequence of sin, but God's righteousness and justice is revealed in mercy which sets us right God breaks us out of that death trap putting it to death.