Penal substitution and the OT narrative of judgment

Andrew Perriman responding to my blog on a non-penal understanding of Isa 53 proposes that while we should not see the Servant Song as a picture of the satisfaction of the demands of justice, he does want to retain a penal view understood in the context of the Old Testament narrative. He writes that,


“There is at least a difference to note between God directly punishing Jesus in order to satisfy the demands of justice and Jesus being implicated in the direct punishment of Israel (in order to satisfy the demands of the Law).”


This is indeed much more Jewish and historical than the classical Calvinist presentation of penal substitution, but it is something I would also want to ultimately reject as well, in particular that last part about “punishment... in order to satisfy the demands of the Law.” The reason not because I reject the biblical narrative, but because I think this only tells half the story.

Much of the book of Isaiah indeed conveys exactly this above narrative: Israel has sinned and now, Isaiah tells them over and over, they are suffering calamity, oppression, and death for their sin. This is not just in Isaiah, it is all over the OT. Andrew writes further that, “in the biblical setting we should recall that sickness is a consequence of Israel’s failure to keep the covenant (cf. Deut. 28:20-22).” Again this is quite true. In the Old Testament mindset, sickness is conceived of as both impurity, and punishment from God.

While this represents the broad picture of sickness in the Hebrew Scriptures, it is important to note that the Old Testament does not present a single static view, but a dynamic one containing internal critiques and developing understandings of who God is. In the book of Job for instance we find a divine critique of the view of Job’s friends, who assumed that Job’s afflictions must have come as the result of his sin. In contrast to their judgment, Job is declared by God to be “a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil” (Job 1 :8). The rest of the book that follows proceeds to give us one long and colorful protest against judging the sick and suffering. Similarly, in Isaiah we again find a critique of the connection of sickness with sin in the story of the suffering servant who, Isaiah tells us, was falsely considered “struck down by God, and afflicted” (Isa 53:4). Yet it is through the righteous suffering of the servant that healing is to come to Israel: “by his bruises we are healed” (Isa 53:5). One might even say that the suffering servant song serves as an internal critique of the view in Isaiah itself that suffering comes as the result of sin.

This inner-biblical critique of the view that sickness and suffering are punishment for sin finds its strongest statement in the gospels. At times Jesus seems to associate sickness with sin (for example in the healing of the paralytic Lk 5:20ff), and other times he explicitly denies it (as with the blind man in in Jn 9:2-3), his focus throughout however is never on ascribing blame, but that “the works of God might be displayed” through a reversal of the curse of sickness and affliction. Andrew is again spot on when he writes, “when Jesus heals the sick, it is to be understood as a sign that the curse is being lifted, that forgiveness is being offered to Israel.” The paradigmatic statement of Jesus here is “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance” (Lk 5:31–32). Here a connection is indeed drawn between “sinners” and “those who are sick,” but the order is reversed: instead of saying that the sick are guilty, he is saying that sin is an illness in need of healing, rather than judgment. This reflects a significant shift: even if sickness is the result of sin, God’s action in Jesus is now to reverse that judgment via healing.

Now here's the part that I think Andrew leaves out: The primary way in which sickness is expressed in the gospels is not in terms of God’s curse, but of demonic affliction. By the time of the gospels, a major shift had occurred in Judaism, and the idea that affliction and sickness stemmed from Satan had become widespread. So while there was still the sense in Second Temple Judaism that Satan served as an “agent of God’s wrath,” and thus that sickness was ultimately the result of God’s judgment, there was now also the notion that sickness came from “the enemy.” This later focus is what we observe in Jesus, who saw the Satanic reign as something to be opposed and overcome. Jesus frames his healing ministry in terms of the kingdom of God advancing against Satan’s kingdom (cf. Lk 11:17–20). This approach to sickness carries over into the approach Jesus took to sin: people are in need of being liberated from both sickness and sin. Jesus "came for sinners" because "it is the sick who need a doctor." Here we have a more sophisticated understanding of sin and sickness: it is not just something to be quarantined, it is something to be healed. The full narrative is not "do good and be blessed, do bad and be cursed" but a way to make the rotten pure and new again.

That is why I would ultimately disagree with a view of the atonement that views Jesus as bearing the “punishment of Israel in order to satisfy the demands of the Law.” In one sense this may be true. I would agree that (as Martin Hengel puts it) Jesus bears the full weight of human wretchedness. But I have a big problem with the idea that this “satisfies” the “demand” of God’s law. The picture I see in the NT and the early church is that the punishment itself is seen as evil, and identified with the will of the devil and not with God’s will. It is something that needs to be opposed and overcome, not fulfilled or satisfied.

God did not kill Jesus, nor did justice or the law. Injustice did. Evil did. We did. As Peter says on Pentecost, “wicked men put him to death by nailing him to the cross. But God raised him from the dead.” (Acts 2:23) That’s Isaiah 53 in one sentence.

A non-penal understanding of Isaiah 53

I got an email recently asking me to explain how the song of the suffering servant in Isa 53 can be understood a non-penal substitution way. So I decided to turn my (rather long) answer into a blog post.

One question that was brought up was the difference between the LXX (the Greek Old Testament read by the Apostles) and the Hebrew OT. For example take verse 10 where it says in the Hebrew

"Yet it was the LORD's will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the LORD makes his life a guilt offering..." (NIV)

but the LXX has,
"The Lord wishes to cleanse Him of His wound, and if you give an offering for sin..."

These two texts clearly have different meaning, but let's step back for a moment and look at the big picture. The whole narrative of Isa 53 is one of a travesty of justice. It begins in 52 by saying that "kings will shut their mouths" when they finally get what no one was able to see coming. Then in 53 it begins by saying "who has believed this message?" and goes on to show how everyone in fact completely got it wrong and did not realize that the one who " took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows" was not someone they should despise as "stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted." The picture here we are seeing is one of a travesty of justice. The servant is treated unfairly. Though the people thought the servant deserved to suffer, really we were the sinful ones. It is not at all a picture of the fulfillment of justice, but of something is lamented as horribly unjust "He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth... By oppression and judgment he was taken away."

Clearly this is not a picture of the satisfaction of the demands of justice. No legal system would ever say it is just to punish the innocent. This goes completely against the entire thrust of the OT law, and indeed against all legal systems. Luther commenting on this says that it goes against "all law, custom, and reason." And that is the whole point. The big picture is that this is supposed to be a shock, something hard to swallow. Isaiah tells us this repeatedly. Paul similarly speaks of the cross as being "foolishness" and a "scandal". So with that in mind let's return to that verse in the LXX...

My guess is that a scribe changed it from "crush" to "cleanse" in an attempt to make sense of the text. The idea that this travesty of justice was somehow God's will was too much for him. So he "fixed" the text. Penal substitution tries to do the same thing by presenting the cross as a reasonable fulfillment of law, even though as I said this really makes no sense (punishing the innocent is not just). Here we who want to get away from a punitive understanding of the cross might also want to adopt the LXX reading and avoid the idea that Christ suffered for us too. But I think that is a mistake. The cross needs to stay a scandal and a shock. It needs to be intimidating. As Moltmann says "if we do not have the feeling that we must flee the cross of Christ, we have not yet understood it in a sufficiently radical way"

The crazy picture we get is that even though it is totally unfair, the servant bore our sickness, suffering, and hurtfulness and that somehow acts to cleanse us. Isaiah does not directly deal with how that works. He says that we are healed, brought peace, and carried, and alludes to the idea of sacrifice, speaking of lambs and guilt offerings (i.e. offerings of restitution). As I have argued here and here, sacrifice has nothing to do with punishment (sacrifice is the alternative to punishment) and everything to do with cleansing - that is with sanctification. So the purpose of Christ bearing our pain, doubt, fear, and ugliness is not so that God can be appeased, but so that we can be made new. This is as I have argued in my article here the way that the early church understood Christ's death for us. So with that in mind, let me "fix" the LXX

"The Lord wishes to cleanse Him of us by His wound, and if you give an accept his offering for sin..."

While I'm at it, let me offer a thought about doing biblical exegesis. Most people read the Bible one verse at a time. When doing this it is very easy to miss the larger story or narrative point (like the one we saw in Isa 53) and instead to simply plug in our preconceived doctrinal understandings onto the words and phrases we see in those little verse snippets. This is not at all helped by the fact that the majority of biblical scholars read in this same way, fussing over single words, arguing about the exact grammatical form of this or that word. Commentaries go on for pages like this, and if you asked me the result is that we focus on the crumbs and miss the cookie. We get so focused on some minute detail that we miss the big picture - not just of this chapter, but of how atonement works throughout the entire narrative of both Testaments, how it was understood by the Apostles, and by the early church. How all the pieces fit together. It is that BIG picture we need to focus on as the primary goal of biblical interpretation, and if you think about it this makes perfect sense. If we were interpreting any other novel or story we would certainly not fuss so much over some little sentence fragment or tense of a verb, we would read the whole story and talk about that. Likewise when people read this blog post I hope they focus on the points I am making and don't write a dissertation on my use of the word "of". It is really not that hard to interpret Isaiah 53 if we simply read it as a whole and look at the theme that it is developing. You don't need to know Hebrew or Greek, you just need to read the whole thing and get your head in the narrative. Someone who does this really well is Eugene Peterson. Here's his rendering of Isa 52:13-53:12:

^13-15"Just watch my servant blossom!
Exalted, tall, head and shoulders above the crowd!
But he didn't begin that way.
At first everyone was appalled.
He didn't even look human—
a ruined face, disfigured past recognition.
Nations all over the world will be in awe, taken aback,
kings shocked into silence when they see him.
For what was unheard of they'll see with their own eyes,
what was unthinkable they'll have right before them."

¹ Who believes what we've heard and seen? Who would have thought God's saving power would look like this?

^2-6The servant grew up before God—a scrawny seedling,
a scrubby plant in a parched field.
There was nothing attractive about him,
nothing to cause us to take a second look.
He was looked down on and passed over,
a man who suffered, who knew pain firsthand.
One look at him and people turned away.
We looked down on him, thought he was scum.
But the fact is, it was our pains he carried—
our disfigurements, all the things wrong with us.
We thought he brought it on himself,
that God was punishing him for his own failures.
But it was our sins that did that to him,
that ripped and tore and crushed him—our sins!
He took the punishment, and that made us whole.
Through his bruises we get healed.
We're all like sheep who've wandered off and gotten lost.
We've all done our own thing, gone our own way.
And God has piled all our sins, everything we've done wrong,
on him, on him.

^7-9He was beaten, he was tortured,
but he didn't say a word.
Like a lamb taken to be slaughtered
and like a sheep being sheared,
he took it all in silence.
Justice miscarried, and he was led off—
and did anyone really know what was happening?
He died without a thought for his own welfare,
beaten bloody for the sins of my people.
They buried him with the wicked,
threw him in a grave with a rich man,
Even though he'd never hurt a soul
or said one word that wasn't true.

¹⁰Still, it's what God had in mind all along,
to crush him with pain.
The plan was that he give himself as an offering for sin
so that he'd see life come from it—life, life, and more life.
And God's plan will deeply prosper through him.

^11-12Out of that terrible travail of soul,
he'll see that it's worth it and be glad he did it.
Through what he experienced, my righteous one, my servant,
will make many "righteous ones,"
as he himself carries the burden of their sins.
Therefore I'll reward him extravagantly—
the best of everything, the highest honors—
Because he looked death in the face and didn't flinch,
because he embraced the company of the lowest.
He took on his own shoulders the sin of the many,
he took up the cause of all the black sheep.

Substitutionary Atonement and the Church Fathers (my EQ article is now online)

The new April issue of Evangelical Quarterly is out (vol. 82 no. 2) with my article Substitutionary Atonement and the Church Fathers: A Reply to the Authors of Pierced for Our Transgressions. I've posted a PDF of the article for folks to read. Here's the abstract:

This paper offers a reply to the claim of the recent book Pierced for Our Transgressions that the doctrine of penal substitution did not originate with Calvin, but was taught by the church fathers. A survey is presented of the writings of Justin Martyr, Eusebius, Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory Nazianzus, Ambrose, and Augustine’s respective understandings of the atonement, understood within their larger soteriology. From this it is concluded that the church fathers did not teach penal substitution, rather the dominant pattern found in these patristic writers is substitutionary atonement understood within the conceptual framework of restorative rather than retributive justice.

Since I announced the upcoming article in a previous blog post a couple of the authors of Pierced for Our Transgressions contacted me. (It still amazes me how connected the internet makes us!) They were quite gracious, and I look forward to being in dialog with them more in the future.

So have a look at the article, and let me know what you think in the comments section below.

My Article in Evangelical Quarterly: Penal Substitution and the Church Fathers

I just heard that my article on the Church Father's view of the atonement will be published in the upcoming (May) issue of Evangelical Quarterly! EQ is an international peer reviewed academic journal of Bible and Theology edited by I. Howard Marshall and published in the UK by Paternoster. So I've doing a happy little dance right now :^)

The article is a response to the book Pierced for our Transgressions claim that penal substitution was taught by the early church. The authors back this up with a host of citations from Justin Martyr, Athanasius, Augustine, and other big guns from the early church, all who seem to be espousing penal substitution. After this book came out there was quite a bit of buzz across the internet of folks exclaiming that the PfoT authors had pretty much conclusively "disproved" the misconception (taught by folks like me) that penal substitution was not taught for the first 1000 years of church history. So I was understandably a little bit irked by this claim which went against the larger tide of patristic scholarship. The problem was that it had been considered so self-evident for so long that the early church did not teach penal substitution that most historians and scholars would simply state it as fact without feeling the need to back it up. So against that the detailed array of quotations marshaled by the PfoT authors was pretty impressive. In fact, it was the one positive thing that NT Wright had to say about the book(!)

The problem is that the quotes they cite are all taken out of context and thus misrepresent what the the early church was saying. So in my EQ article I take a look at the citations they give, paying attention to the larger context, and showing that the early church not only did not teach penal substitution, but in fact explicitly denies it. Here's the tricky part though: What they do teach is substitutionary atonement, and so to folks who think that the only way to understand substitutionary atonement is in the way Calvinists do, this of course looks like the Calvinist doctrine. Only if you really listen to what the church fathers are saying, actually reading them in context, they are understanding substitutionary atonement in a very different context - one which has to do with healing our sin and liberating us from bondage.

In correcting the record, I thought it would be important to say this via an academic peer reviewed journal in order to take the conversation beyond the blogosphere and get it in front of theologians and scholars as well. My hope that it will open up the possibility of some dialog here, because while I think that the authors of Pierced for Our Transgressions are definitely wrong in their representation of the fathers, at the same time I also know that they are good guys who love Jesus and are all pretty sharp to boot. What I really appreciate about the atmosphere of debate in England (both EQ and the PfoT authors are in the UK) as opposed to here in the States is that while we tend to have polarized sides on issues that shut down communication, they are more accustomed to lively debates. That's true specifically of Evangelicalism here, and across the pond as well. So I hope that this will spur a healthy discussion, even though we obviously disagree significantly.

update: I have now posted a PDF of my article. More here.

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.

Atonements Debate: A Response to Recent Criticisms

I'm reading through the book The Atonement Debate which is a collection of essays by evangelical theologians who gathered together at a symposium hosted by the Evangelical Alliance and the London School of Theology to debate the pros and cons of penal substitution in the wake of the recent controversy in Europe sparked by a comment by Steve Chalke in his book The Lost Message of Jesus that was critical of the doctrine.

In this post I want to address the chapter by Garry Williams entitled "Penal Substitution: A Response to Recent Criticisms". Williams begins by addressing a criticism raised by Steve Chalke: that it would be inconsistent for God to command us not to practice retribution, if God made retribution the center point of his redemptive work in Jesus. Chalke sums up his position saying that "I for one believe that God practices what he preaches". Williams in response argues that God does in fact have a right to act differently than humans do. He appeals to Paul's argument in Romans 12 where he urges us not to practice retribution, but to leave that to God.

Williams is, I think, right in saying that God is not subject to the same rules as humans are. God can judge in a way that no human can. God has a right to demand our worship in a way that no human does. So Williams makes a valid point here generally. However, while we cannot take everything God does is a model for human behavior (since we are not God), the cross is presented in the New Testement specifically as a model for ethical behavior. So we can and should take the message of the cross as a model of how we should act. Paul grounds his teaching on ethics in Philipians on our imitaion of the way of the cross. Jesus also calls us to "take up our cross" and follow him. If, as Williams insists, the central message of the cross is a demonstration and affirmation of retribution, this would mean that retribution is being set forth as a model of human interaction. If the "way of the cross" is the "way of retribution" then we are called to follow in that way. Since we clearly are not called to practice retribution in the New Testament, retribution is not the "way of the cross".

Secondly, Williams in championing retribution seems to be missing the larger point of the gospel. Even if we do accept that divine retribution is justified and right, and that we as sinful humans are headed towards that judement, this by itself is by no defintion the "gospel". The gospel is a way to avoid that retribution, a way for God to not send us to Hell. The whole point of the gospel is that the economy of quid pro quo justice, of get what you deserve, of sewing and reaping is superseded by the superior economy of grace where God acts, despite the fact that we have not earned it, to save us, heal us, and set us free. I am sure that Williams agrees with all of this, but his focus on retribution seems to loose sight of the larger perspective of salvation and grace.

This is not simply a matter of semantics. Williams, in focusing his soteriology seemingly exclusivly on the idea of retribution leaves no room for the idea of sanctification. As Williams puts it, the only problem is the need for punishment. Once that punishment is "exhasted" on Christ, Williams says, the "obstacle" to new life is removed. In other words, there is no objective onological problem of sin in people that needs to be healed, the problem is with God. Here I think Williams gets it backwards. If God is angry at sin, it is because sin is a real problem. Remove the problem by healing the sin, and you remove the cause of God's righteous anger. So God acts in Christ to heal, to cleanse, to renew, to sanctifiy, to liberate, to make us new, thus addressing the problem of sin which is our problem.

The papradigm here is a medical one. If a person is sick they need a doctor. That is precisly the reason Jesus gives of why he has come to seek sinners: they are sick and need a doctor. If salvation is framed however only in terms of retribution, then the entire idea that sin is a problem that needs to be healed is simply lost. Sin becomes only an act that needs punishment, and once that punishment is taken care of, the problem just vanishes. This strikes me as a very shallow understanding of the depths of human brokenness. There are real consequences to us hurting and being hurt. Deep and profound consequences. We might even describe them as a kind of "retribution" flowing out of that action, as Williams does. But the task of salvation is for God to break that vicious cycle, to set us free from that bondage, to heal our brokenness, to make us new and clean again. That's a perspective that allows for the reality of so called "divine retribution" (and we do need to be very cautious of such phrasings as they can easily evoke a picture of sinful and petty human anger), but views it in its proper perspective within the larger picture of God's redemptive work. Simply put, it is the dilema, not the solution. The solution is grace, which is a creative, restorative, transformative, action of God, not an inaction.

penal substitution and being born again

While Penal substitution has been the predominant theory of the atonement among Evangelicals such as my self, it in fact does not coincide with an Evangelical understanding of the new birth which has to do not only with justification: a legal change in our relationship, but far more with regeneration: the renewal of our very being - God's act of giving us new life, a new birth. John Wesley writes,

“Justification implies only a relative, the new birth a real, change. God in justifying us does something for us; in begetting us again, he does the work in us. The former changes our outward relation to God, so that of enemies we become children; by the latter our inmost souls are changed, so that of sinners we become saints. The one restores us to the favor, the other to the image, of God.”

What Wesley here is addressing is the contrast between the doctrine of justification that had been developed under Lutheran orthodoxy post-Luther which focused on a mere legal change, justification understood as acquittal. In contrast, beginning with German Pietism, and then through both Methodist and Reform channels we have the flowering of Evangelicalism which returned the focus to the need to be born again leading to waves of revivals in the First and Second Great Awakening. Simply put, this idea of justification going together with regeneration was and is at the very core of Evangelical faith then and now.

Luther himself underwrites this interpretation of the Gospel in his Preface to the Book of Romans. Luther decries an understanding of faith with “no betterment of life or works that follow it” as merely a detached theoretical human faith “that never reaches the depths of the heart” and contrasts this with genuine faith which he describes as “a divine work of God in us” that “changes us and makes us to be born anew of God (Jn 1:3)". This faith, Luther says, “kills the old Adam and makes altogether different men of us in heart and spirit. Oh, it is a living, busy, active, mighty thing, this faith, and so it is impossible for it not to do good works incessantly.”

Simply put: At the very heart of Evangelical faith is the idea of being born again. Regeneration and justification together constitute a proper Evangelical understanding of salvation. Therefore an Evangelical understanding of the Atonement needs to address both the issue of justification and regeneration. Any theory that addresses only part, is an incomplete theory that does not present the full Gospel.

Penal substitution on its own only addresses justification, but not regeneration. It speaks of what God does not do to us (he does not punish), but it says nothing of what he does do in us to make us a new creation. So even if we accept that one of the things that happened on the cross is that Christ took the penalty on our behalf, the atonement means much much more. Penal substitution on its own is at best a half-Gospel. Simply being aquitted is not enough if we are “dead in our sins” as Paul says. We need to be made alive, to be born again. So the question that remains unaddressed by penal substitution is: “how does God work that new life in us through the atonement?” At the very least one would need to combine penal substitution with other theories which can account for how regeneration is achieved in the atonement. Solely on its own penal substitution only explains what God does externally for us in the cross, but not what he does in us.

So why is it that despite the clear teaching within Evangelicalism for the need to be born again, we have adopted an understanding of the Atonement that does not reflect this? It is interesting that Wesley while he re-thought what salvation was about, adding the idea of regeneration to justification did not do the same with the Atonement. Instead he simply adopted the traditional penal view of his church. Like Luther, he was a practiical theologian rather than a systematic one. As a result he did not follow things to their logical conclusions, but simply focused on his one core message. It is the task of those who follow to continue along that path, and to ask how the idea of substitution may be understood in terms of how the Christ-event makes it possible for us to be born again.

Penal Substitution AND Christus Victor?

Dave sent me an email with some challenging questions regarding my article “ Penal Substitution vs. Christus Victor” that I thought it might be interesting to answer in a blog. So here we go. I'll put Dave's questions in bold.

I read your article "Penal Substitution V Christus Victor" with interest. It is a very stimulating document. However -can I challenge you to engage more with what those advocating Penal Substitution are and are not arguing. There are a few things worth considering.

First the literature around -worth considering the old classic The Cross of Christ -John Stott and of course more recently Sach Ovey and Jeffry, Pierced for our transgression. Also Tom Wright's support for Penal Subsitution. Certainly the line would be not CV v PSA but rather PSA and CV togethr helping to give a full picture.

I have read Stott's book many times. It is certainly a classic as far as PS goes. I have also read “Pierced for Our Transgressions” and thought that was in contrast very poorly researched. I think they completely misrepresent for example the positions of people like Augustine and Athanasius. NT Wright has had some pretty negative things to say about this book. For what its worth, I have also spoken with NT Wright personally about PS, and he actually rejects it while embracing substitutionary atonement understood within the context of CV.

Let me mention a few other books on the side of PS that I found quite good. “The Glory of Penal Substitution” has quite a few good papers in it worth reading. I particularly liked the one by Van Hoozer. Packer's article “The Logic of Penal Substitution” is brilliant (and available online). Leon Morris “Apostolic Preaching” has some phenomenal research in it. Then there are people like PT Forsyth and James Denney who have some great stuff too.

One thing here that crystallizes with reading Forsyth, Denney, Van Hoozer, and Packer is that a great deal of the criticisms that are made of PS have also been made by people advocating PS too. So it is possible to embrace PS and at the same time be critical of its more legalistic and “crude” expressions. The question then becomes: what would a sophisticated and grace centered version of PS look like as opposed to a legalistic one?

This is perhaps best captured by Packer's now famous quote
“…Jesus Christ our Lord moved by a love that was determined to do everything necessary to save us, endured and exhausted the destructive divine judgement for which we were otherwise inescapably destined and so won us forgiveness adoption and glory.”

Great quote. Do you recall where Packer said this?

It may surprise you to hear that, as it stands, I would agree with the above quote. I would want to refine and clarify a few points I am sure, but I will say that I do think that substitutionary atonement (which is a broader term than PS) is the linchpin of the entire atonement – the means of our redemption.

Where I would want to tweak the above statement is the phrase “endured and exhausted the destructive divine judgement”. I do not think that the God needed to “get his anger out of his system” by punishing someone, even if that someone was himself. I would say instead that wrath is averted through our purification, or in technical terms that propitiation happens through expiation. Remove the sin (expiation) and you remove the cause of judgement (propitiation). Expiation is the key concept here in the atonement – our transformation and purification through Christ's blood.

So with that in mind can we say that Christ endured the judgement and death that humanity was due? Absolutely. The question is why? For what reason? That's where I think PS gets it wrong. The reason is expiation.

Key things there

1. Moved by a love... -this is language of love. It is an uncharitable nonsense to suggest that "In Satisfaction-Doctrine love is not central, but viewed with suspicion." I appreciate my language is strong there -but we have got to be right when we talk about what people believe.

Yes, love does need to be seen as the motivating factor. Some (for example Emil Brunner) have instead stressed that the need to fulfill the demands of justice or moral law was the key factor. I disagree, and so do people like Packer and Denney.

I's say that most Evangelicals who embrace PS do so because they see the love and grace of God in that he would endure suffering out of love for us. This is something I certainly would embrace as well. The problem is that many other people hearing the stress on God demanding punishment have gotten the opposite impression which has lead them to a hurtful image of God that damages their trust and can keep them from grace. Beyond any theological issues, I think this is the key issue: how can we present the Gospel and atonement so that people hear the message of a loving and just God they can trust? At least on a popular level (and often on an academic level as well) this has been quite problematic with PS because people are often more concerned with defending doctrine than they are with communicating grace (and here I will resist naming names, but I can unfortunately think of quite a few). I do want to stress also that I do not mean to imply that you are doing this at all. On the contrary, I greatly appreciated the generous and irenic tone in your post.

If it is as Aulen would say about reconciliation between God and man -then it is our relationship to him. Is sin simply the thing that oppresses us? What about the sense in which we identify with those who killed Jesus -those who are hostile to God.

I think you may be misunderstanding Aulen here (which may be my fault). He would say that the cross is primarily about our redemption (deliverance) by God from the bondage of sin, death, and the devil not of reconciliation (forgivness) between God and humanity. In that context he speaks of a “doublesidedness” where we are at the same time the victim of sin – its captive – and are guilty and culpable because it is our sin that has led us into this bondage. So we have humans as being both victims and perpetrators, needing to be liberated/ransomed/redeemed and reconciled/forgiven.

Christus Victor in opposition to Penal Substitution places us in a difficult position because -we are the ones who should be defeated by his victory.

I agree and disagree here.

I disagree in that I'd say our “defeat” is a necessary part of the atonement in that our sin and we are overcome and in that our identity is transformed from being a “son of perdition” to a son or daughter of God. Our enmity is defeated.

I would agree that a full view would need to see the themes of substitution and ransom rather together rather than as opposed, but would say that because PS and CV are essentially incompatible this merger, this would need to be in the form of CV together with an incarnational understanding of substitutionary atonement.

We need of course to bring other elements to bear -especially the idea of faith union.

Yes! I would argue here that the way to understand substitutionary atonement is not in terms of satisfaction of punishment or propitiation of wrath, but as recapitulation – God enters into our wretchedness, lostness, suffering, sickness, and sin and as us representationally overcomes death and hell in rising from the dead. In dying and rising as us (representationally, incarnation ally) Christ makes it possible for us to die and rise in Christ as well so that we are made holy through our union with him, us in Christ and Christ in us transforming us through an indwelling personal relationship with God.

Thanks for the challenging questions, and I hope you find some edification here in my response as well.

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."

These Infinite Spaces

My article " Understanding the Cross: Penal Substitution vs Christus Victor is generating some lively dialog over on the Blog These Infinate Spaces. I've included some of my responses here for you. You can check out the whole thing in context here. Just so you know, the text below "CV" stands for Christus Victor and "PS" for Penal Subsitution.

Craig writes: "What Anselm rejected in the Ransom theory was the idea that God had to make a bargain with the devil, and that He essentially tricked the devil into releasing human souls"

This criticism was not a new idea with Anselm. The Church Fathers had argued extensively about the best way to formulate this, and had made similar criticisms themselves. What is of monumental significance is that with Anselm, a major shift occurred where salvation was no longer understood in the deep terms of humanity being enslaved to sin and our need to be liberated from that bondage, but instead viewed sin in the legal terms of transgression, understanding salvation as paying a penalty to “satisfy” the demands of law. When the central understanding of atonement shifted from ransom from slavery to satisfaction of justice, the paradigm for sin shifted with it from the relational idea of bondage (who we belong to) to the legal idea of transgression (what we do).

With that, the deep reaching impact of the Christus Victor soterology was last and "Christus Victor" became in the minds of many Evangelicals today an insignificant appendix (for example with both John Stott and Derek Tidball). It is this "tacking on" of Christus Victor that I find problematic. I think it actually has some really profound implications that need to be explored. Two people who have pioneered this in different areas are Jürgen Moltmann and Walter Wink.

David writes:
"As Craig rightly asserts, CV doesn't really have a vigorous understanding of a personified Satan"

This statement surprised me. I would disagree and say that CV is in fact rooted in a deep understanding of the devil, and that PS is lacking in it. One can completely leave the devil out of the formulation of Penal Substitution. Christus Victor on the other hand is rooted in the idea of Christ overcoming "sin, death, and the devil". It expands the idea of sin beyond "transgression" to "bondage" showing the deep reaching consequences of evil in the human heart. CV is essentially about a change of identity from bondage to adoption, the theme of "redemption from slavery". The devil is crucial to this understanding.

What Gustav Aulen has removed from the ransom theory is not the devil, but its heavy legal focus and replaced it with a dramatic focus. Quite a number of major Evangelical theologians including JI Packer and James Denney have sharply criticized the legal focus in PS as well, and Packer has suggested that PS should also be seen (following Aulen) with a dramatic rather than legal focus (which he Packer sharply criticizes).

So what is so bad about a legal focus? I am not really arguing that it is "cold". I think one can me emotional and cold as well. In fact as an aside, I find Jonathan Edwards a pretty bad example of positive emotion since he was pretty nasty. I would instead suggest Spurgeon who was a PS advocating Calvinist with a huge heart for the lost. He is an excellent example of "positive emotion". The problem I have with a legal theory of the cross is twofold (there are other reasons, but I will limit myself for brevity sake):

1) A legal focus does not express the focus of Scripture which is clearly on the supremacy of love (Love is the "greatest commandment", the "sum of the law and the profits", if I "have not love I am nothing", "God is love", etc) over the law which the NT (both Jesus and Paul) are quite critical of. Biblically focus of the Atonement needs to be relational not legal. It was an expression of God's amazing love for us.

2) A legal focus trivializes sin. Sin is not simply an infraction, it is a cancer. It is bondage. It is about identity (who we belong to and who we are). It is a deep rooted problem that needs to be deeply addressed. Punishment does not heal the wounds of the sinner nor those who have been sinned against. It is superficial. What people need is a profound inner transformation, a change in identity, healing for their cancer. These are all aspects of God's work that a legal theory simply cannot capture.

So why don't we then have, as Packer suggests, a dramatic relational understanding of PS? Good idea. This is I think how most Evangelicals understand the cross: they see the great cost, they are humbled that this was "for them", they are moved by dramatic depictions like the movie "The Passion". The problem here is that while we can and should have a dramatic understanding of substitutionary atonement and vicarious sacrifice (as Luther did) there is a fundamental flaw specifically in PS's explanation of that vicarious sacrifice:

The idea of "satisfaction" does not mean "to gratify" as it does in English today but "to make restitution". With Anselm the idea of satisfaction/restitution was a way to avoid punishment. We make restitution and thus avoid punishment (pay the fine avoid a whipping). Specifically with the cross, Jesus make restitution by restoring God's honor (by giving his life so nobly for us Jesus gave God extra honor beyond what was due God in the sinless life of Jesus making up for the honor God had lost because of our dishonoring sin). Since restitution/satisfaction had been made there was no reason for the punishment. Now of course this whole system of honor is an artificial man-made concept of feudal times, but within Anselm's framework it does all make sense. I think there is in fact (if we could pull it out of its feudal legal framework a bit) some deep things about Anselm's theory. PT Forsyth does a good job of exploring this.

With Thomas Aquinas the idea of satisfaction/restitution changed. Unlike Anselm who said one made restitution to avoid punishment (pay the fine or go to jail) Aquinas said that it was the punishment that made the restitution (By seeing someone hurt you felt better). On a carnal level we can see how making someone hurt who hurt us would be "satisfying" (that is, gratifying). Its the basic desire for revenge, for payback. Whether it "makes things right" (restitution) is debatable. But there's another level here: What if instead of whipping and executing the guilty man we instead take someone who is innocent and good and beat and execute them instead and then let the guilty one go free? Does that sound like a fulfillment of justice? No, it sounds terrible. This is the elephant in the room of PS, it is as a (legal) theory profoundly unjust.

Compare that with the idea of someone giving their life for another, a firefighter who dies rescuing others from the flames, a body guard who takes a bullet for someone. this is heroic and deeply moving. We often see in movies the hero say to the terrorists who are going to kill someone (usually female) "No take me!". I think anyone with kids who are sick and suffering can relate to the wish that we could suffer instead of them. "I'd give anything to take their place" we say. But what is the theme here? It is Christus Victor. The bullet, the burning building, the ravaging disease, the terrorists, are not pictures of "justice being satisfied" they are bad things. Pictures of the Accuser, of Satan.

In short the vicarious sacrifice "in our place" is a moving and dramatic idea that is all over the NT. But explaining it in legal terms gives completely the wrong impression because in a legal sense it would be profoundly unjust. Understood in a relational sense however, as a ransom, as a redemption, it makes perfect sense.

Craig writes:
"Derek, I don't understand how you can reject the category of law, but still wish to uphold the concept of justice. Law is justice implemented and applied."

I would differentiate between human laws which are an outwardly imposed artificial human construct, and God's moral law which is simply the way the universe works. Sin is not punished by some extra action of God, sin "leads to death" just like hitting the ground is the consequence of gravity. God "gives us over to wrath" Paul says. God's moral laws are written into the fabric of who we are. Their consequences are inevitable flowing from the nature of how life works, again like gravity. Biblically this is not "justice", it is wrath, the curse, death. "Justice" biblically speaking is about "making things right". This was Luther's major discovery. Justice was not about consequence for sin as the Scholastics taught, it was about God making thing right.

Michael writes,
"The problem I can see with Derek's Christus Victor scheme is dualism... which is to say: God is not in any sense here the agent of our judgment/punishment."

I don't see this to be the case. I wonder if you have read the entire article on my website rather than merely the posts here? Biblically we have all three expressions:
1)God being the one who brings judgment,
2) judgment coming as a process ("the wrath" and "the curse" in Paul) and
3) judgment being executed by the devil.

So there is a pretty complex picture in Scripture. In Christus Victor the image is of the devil as the "accuser" (which is what "Satan" means) but it is also understood that he has "rights" because we have indeed sinned. This picture is not of God and Satan as co-equal (dualism) but of Satan as a fallen angel.

That means that the law for example is made to be good, made to point to God (not to be equal with God) but can through sin become something that instead leads to death (fallen). So God who desires life seeks a way to redeem both fallen humanity as well as to redeem the fallen law through grace. It is a more complex view than PS to incorporate the idea of fallenness and the devil, but I think it is also truer to both the complexity of the Biblical witness and to life. I go into all this in more detail in part 4 of my essay.

You are correct that ultimately God is the author of wrath (and of gravity). Gustav Aulen calls this the "double-sidedness" of the Atonement: God saves us from his own wrath. The Divine Love overcomes the Divine Wrath.

Incarnational Penal Substitution

I've been reading Between Cross and resurrection by the late Alan Lewis, and came across this formulation in Calvinist terms

"Christ is not only the Elect in whom humanity is chosed and redeemed, but also the Reprobate on whom is laid God's judgment of humanity."

John Stott in The Cross of Christ speaks how we cannot think of the cross as God demanding an appeasement so that he will be persuaded to love us, but that God is the one offering the sacrifice because he loves us. I think we can take this a step further and say in Trinitarian terms that God is the one on the cross because Jesus is God the Son. Rule number one of Trinitarian thought is that God is one. There is complete unity in the Godhead. So if God the Son is there on the cross, we can truly say that God is up there. So taking that and combining it with the quote above we get

God became accursed and damned, that we might become the righteousness of God.

God took on human flesh, and out of love willingly submitted to all of our sorrow, helplessness, and separation. He "became sin". So that we might likewise inherit his purity. Here we have clearly substitutionary atonement. We can even say that it is a penal substitution is that God took upon Himself the judgment of sin, the curse, that was upon us. Seen from the traditional legal perspective, one cannot take the punishment for another.

Thomas Aquinas in the Summa Theologiae, which is recognized as codifying the idea of penal substitution that has become the doctrine of the Catholic church (I'm sure they call it something else) and was later adopted by the Reformation (i.e. the shift from Anselmian Satisfaction where satisfaction (reparation) is an alternative to punishment, to the punishment itself being what satisfied) explicitly denies that the substitution is a legal one:

"If we speak of that satisfactory punishment, which one takes upon oneself voluntarily, one may bear another's punishment... If, however, we speak of punishment inflicted on account of sin, inasmuch as it is penal, then each one is punished for his own sin only, because the sinful act is something personal. But if we speak of a punishment that is medicinal, in this way it does happen that one is punished for another's sin." (FS, Q. 87-A8)

St. Thomas does affirm that one can take the punishment for another, just not in a legal sense. I think anyone with children will understand the wish of a parent to "take the place" of your child when they are suffering or in trouble. We see it all the time in the movies when the hero says "No, let her go. Take me instead".

So have I just agreed with Penal Substitution? Well maybe. If
1) it is thought of in relational-moral terms instead of legal ones,
2) it is understood that it is ultimately God who offers himself
3) satisfaction is understood in its original meaning of "making restitution" rather that the modern meaning of "gratification"

The question I have, is whether a Calvinist would recognize the above as a legitimate understanding of Penal Substitution. Any takers?

Penal Substitution vs Vicarious Suffering

As you might have guessed from the articles, I am predisposed to disagree with Penal Substitution. Lets face it, its yucky. But I also wanted to be true to Scripture and not just arrive at a view of God reflective of what I think is "nice" as tempting as that may be.

I have found lots of Scriptures that speak of the cross in substitutionary terms, and in terms of not just its love, but also of its scandal, blood, and wretchedness. I'd therefore like to introduce two concepts:

penal substitution and vicarious suffering. The former is I think unbiblical, the later the core of the Atonement. Lets examine both:

They both consist of two elements
Penal Substitution means basically "punishment (penal) instead of (substitution). Vicarious Suffering is different in that it is vicarious ("for us") and one could even say in light of the incarnation "as us" (God becomes human and enters into all of that including sin) but it is not "instead of us". On the contrary, Jesus says "anyone who does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me" and Peter and Paul both tell us that we will suffer as we follow. So the first contrast is substitution/vicarious. Jesus died for us, with us, even as us. Not instead of us. In fact his death calls us to come and die with him.

Secondly there is the contrast of penal/suffering. There is a penal aspect to verses like Isaiah 53 for instance, but it is not only about Christ bearing our punishment, he also bears our sickness and sorrow. Because of this the suffering takes on more of a solidarity as God suffers with us bearing our sin sorrow and sickness. Rather than the sin bearing having the purpose of appeasing wrath, it both removes wrath and at the same time condemns wrath and the law and judgment in so far as these good things through sin have come to "lead us to death" and enslave as Paul says in Romans. Again, there is a penal element to the suffering of Christ but it is only one part of the whole picture of God bearing our injustice, abuse, pride, helplessness, doubt, hypocrisy, and hopelessness so that nothing would separate us from him and from Life. On top of that the cross and its conflicts of showing justice in its injustice or God's glory in humilation (what Luther called "God's revelation hidden in its opposite) entails a major critique of the fallenness of both us AND our systems, authorities, laws, and rules.

So rather than simply throwing out the ideas of "penal substitution" throughout Scripture, I propose that we think them as "vicarious suffering". I have found that this model makes much more sense and leads to a much deeper insight into the cross that is in keeping with the heart, actions, and teaching of Jesus.