My friend Mike Todd is rethinking his view of the atonement:
I won’t keep you in the dark on what I think any longer. The notion that I have let go of is the Penal Substitution theory of atonement…
He argues that no single theory can explain God, that penal substitution makes God less than God, is incompatible with grace, fails to place the atonement within the larger story of God, and misunderstands God’s wrath. The heart of the gospel, he says, is that God is quite fond of us, and plans to redeem all of creation.
In the comments, Mike suggests, “Jesus, who was without sin, took our sin upon himself, but I think perhaps he did it so we could get over it and move past it.” God didn’t require a sacrifice for sin; we did.
A few reflections:
First, the penal substitution perspective is often misunderstood, and we need to take care that we don’t believe in a caricature. John Stott writes of some of the wrong ways we present this perspective:
Reluctant to suffer himself, [the Father] victimizes Christ instead. Reluctant to forgive, he is prevailed on by Christ to do so. [The Father] is seen as a pitiless ogre whose wrath has to be assauged, whose disinclination to act has to be overcome, by the loving self-sacrifice of Jesus.
Such crude interpretations of the cross still emerge in some of our evangelical illustrations, as when we describe Christ as coming to rescue us from the judgment of God, or when we portray him as the whipping-boy who is punished for the real culprit, or as the lightning conductor to which the lethal electric charge is deflected. (The Cross of Christ)
In other words: be careful not to caricature the penal substitutionary perspective. Scot McKnight rightfully says, “I believe the hue and cry by emerging Christians about penal substitution is a gut-level reaction to caricatures of the doctrine.”
Second, Mike is right that there is more than one perspective on the atonement. I don’t like the word theories as much as I do perspectives – different ways of looking at the same thing. This is the beauty of Scot McKnight’s book A Community Called Atonement. There are other perspectives on the atonement: the atonement as example, as a demonstration of God’s love, a demonstration of God’s justice, and as a decisive triumph over evil. Millard Erickson argues that “each of the theories of the atonement contains a valid insight,” but “it is only on the basis of the substitutionary view that those other insights bear force.”
Third, the penal substitutionary view is not only the view of some Reformed types, but is also held by others such as McKnight and N.T. Wright (see here and here). I realize that you don’t win an argument by stacking up experts, but we need to counter the view that it’s a novel or fringe view held by only the very conservative.
Finally, this reminds me of that game I played as a kid with sticks and marbles. The object was to pull out a stick without all the marbles crashing down. I’m all for pulling out sticks that don’t belong, but I am a little worried about what marbles are about to fall. We need to be careful about redefining God’s wrath. or suggesting that we have more of a problem with sin than God does. There are so many important themes across Scripture, as well as some significant passages of Scripture, that need to be dealt with any time we rethink an important doctrine.
{ 18 comments… read them below or add one }
Darryl,
Mark Driscoll’s Death by Love is a great overview of the many different prespectives on the Atonement. I highly recommend it.
Darryl, I REALLY appreciate the manner in which you have approached Mike on this.
Darryl,
Well said. Perhaps this will become a bit of an unintentional synchroblog. I’ll post on it later today, myself.
Look forward to seeing you tomorrow.
Darryl,
Well said. I like your ‘perspectives’ rather than ‘theories’. It reminds me of the way George Carey talks about ‘images’ of the atonement in The Gate Of Glory.
Um,… Kind of radical ideas, and I am not sure I can agree with all of them. Still, food for thought, so they are. I’ll probably revisit this later.
Darryl – I really appreciate the way you approached me too!
I tried to clarify in one of the comments to my own post. At the risk of over-simplifying, I’ll say that what I am questioning is the idea that God required sacrifice in order to forgive our sins. I’m suggesting perhaps atonement is more about symbolism so that we can get past our sins.
Thanks for the dialogue.
Thanks, Mike. Wish we could talk about this in person.
I’d be interested in you unpacking what you mean when you say we don’t understand God’s wrath. A lot of this seems to be center around God’s justice and wrath.
I’m not sure it is entirely fair to say that people are critiquing a caricature, because what I see critiqued is what a great many evangelicals believe.
PSA and eternal punishment were pretty clearly linked when I’ve been taught. It kind of went like this: God is holy, because He is holy He must punish sin, God can’t go against his own nature, so he sent his Son to die to cover our sin and expiate his wrath. If we don’t tap in to God’s transaction by accepting Christ we will have to pay the price by being slow roasted for all ages.
For me this really doesn’t make sense. Why?
God simply overlooked sin in the past.
Israel was never threatened with eternal punishment. Was God still the same kind of Holy?
How does the torture of one man expiate the wrath of God for the sin of all humanity?
Why is God’s wrath over the sin of an individual never expiated even with eternal torment?
The cross was about more than substitutionary atonement. Clearly there are other theories/perspectives (such as Christus Victor) that are part of that work. Let’s celebrate those perspectives too, but never at the diminshment of penal substitutionary atonement. I’m sad to see substitutionary atonement under attack again by certain popular writers. Our forebears fought this battle, but the new Fosdick’s can’t let it go. Apparently it’s all too bloody for sensitive postmodern ears and tastes.
Interesting comment from Scot McKnight. He’s a professor at the Evangelical Covenant Church’s NorthPark University. The ECC was founded by Peter Paul Waldenstrom who’s view of the atonement was what caused the Covenant Church of Sweden to be formed.
I agree with Mr. Tebay.
I am certainly open to these ideas. Comprehending the cross in its entirety is beyond our capacity. Why should it be any different from the myriad other theological mysteries? It makes sense to me that it can simultaneously stand for a number of things both symbolic and transactional. It seems to me the more reasonable perspectives we consider, the more fullsome our understanding will become.
I do hope you write more about this Darryl. I am fascinated.
LT:
You ask some good questions.
Actually, God didn’t simply overlook sins in the Old Testament. He provided the sacrificial system, which Jesus said pointed to his sacrifice on the cross. This is a major theme in Hebrews.
Israel was threatened with punishment for sin. It’s clear that God hates sin and that sin leads to death and alienation from God. The afterlife is hinted at but not clearly taught, but this is more an issue of progressive revelation than anything else.
It is hard to understand how the death of one man can be enough to save many, especially since we tend to think individualistically. It’s also hard to understand what Paul teaches about being “in Adam” or “in Christ.” Of course, Jesus wasn’t just any man. He was God and was sinless. It is clear, though, that Jesus’ death was sufficient to save many (John 1:29, 1 John 2:2, 1 Tim. 2:6, etc.).
Why is God’s wrath over the sin of an individual never expiated even with eternal torment? Because hell is ultimately not a place where sins are paid for or where people repent and are reconciled to God.
About your comment at Mike’s site – I agree penal substitution is not the only perspective needed on the cross, but if anyone uses it as an excuse to ignore this life and focus only on heaven, they really haven’t taken the New Testament teaching in its entirety.
There are tons of good questions, and we’ll never get it clearly tied up. The Scriptural evidence about God’s justice and wrath against sin are pretty compelling (to say the least), as are the texts that teach that Christ’s death is more than an example or the defeat of evil or because we needed to get over sin. It is that, but it’s more.
I’ve put some of my thoughts on this subject in a blog post that can be found at http://midwestoutreach.org/blogs/the-lamb-that-was-slain.
Sorry. On sober and prayerful reflection, I cannot buy into the concept that “God didn’t require a sacrifice for sin; we did.” Or “that penal substitution makes God less than God, is incompatible with grace, fails to place the atonement within the larger story of God, and misunderstands God’s wrath.”
God Himself instituted the practice of blood-sacrifice in killing an animal and using the hide to cover the evidence of Adam’s sinful act. Under the Old Covenant, He required
burnt offerings to make atonement for mankind’s sins, meaning He did not merely overlook their,… or our,… sins.
That those sacrifices were not sufficient to entirely pay the debt that mankind owes because of our sinful nature does not make God less Holy, or Righteous, or Just. Those sacrifices under the Old Covenant were meant as a temporary measure to atone for their sins and redeem them from the consequences of their sinful nature. The blood and burnt sacrifices were but an imitation, an imperfect picture, of the sacrifice that would ultimately satisfy the requirements of a Holy, Righteous and just God. In short, they point to the only sacrifice that would really pay the price of redemption for all mankind. The death on the cross of Christ Jesus, was,… and is today,… the only sacrifice that would, or could,… or can now,… make mankind acceptable in God’s sight. God, in His Mercy and Grace, paid the penalty Himself in the person of His innocent Son.
“How does the torture of one man expiate the wrath of God for the sin of all humanity?” The torture of one MAN can never expiate the wrath of God. It took the death of the perfect God-man to expiate His wrath. Man’s efforts are “but filthy rags.”
We do NOT need new “perceptions/perspectives/theories.” While I agree that we will never fully understand or appreciate the Gospel in its entirety, I think that what we need more of is the unvarnished, uncorrupted, old-fashioned Gospel according to the Holy Bible.
I should add that it is our attempts to rationalize the Gospel, our perceptions/perspectives/theories that “fail to place the atonement within the larger story of God, and misunderstand God’s wrath.”
The story of God, the Gospel, the Atonement are all quite adequately dealt with in the writings of the authors of The New Covenant. We may very well need help in understanding what we read, but we should never try to add our own opinions on the matter and make them the gospel. Neither should we subtract anything from what was written because it offends our concepts of right and wrong or our modern ideas.
Sorry, Darryl:
I’m still gnawing at this bone,…. I just don’t get it. Why do people insist on trying to pay a price that has already been paid in full? Why do people try to earn something that has been freely given to them already?
All throughout history, from the tribes surrounding the Israelites, to the Egyptians, the Romans, the Greeks, the Aztecs, Maya and Incas, the Philippine Islands, the North American Indians, the Africans, the South and Central American “Indian” tribes, the Asian and South Asian peoples; as I said, all throughout history, people have recognized that the gods required a sacrifice to appease them and atone for the misdeeds of the nations. Some gods merely required a gift of foodstuff, as in some of the Asian deities, but some demanded the blood of innocents. In many cases thousands of innocents were sacrificed in vain attempts to appease the gods and stave off disaster. Even today, in some “christian” sects, people engage in self-flagellation, self-crucifixion, or crawl for miles over broken glass in an effort to atone for their sins.
Why is it then, that people cannot seem to grasp that The One, True God also requires a sacrifice to redeem us from the curse of the Law and the results of our sinful natures, but that in His Mercy and Grace, knowing that nothing we could do would ever be sufficient to pay the price to satisfy His Holiness and Justice, gave HIMSELF as the sacrificial atonement for our sins? I like the way the Old King James Version puts it when telling about Abraham and Isaac’s trip up the mountain: “My son, God will provide Himself the sacrifice,…” I read that as “God will provide Himself (as) the sacrifice,…”
Praise God! Hallelujah! Glory be to God! When I consider that,… and I admit I cannot quite get my head around such Love,… I want to shout it from the rooftops! “For God so Loved the world,….” WOW!
Darryl–Here’s another ‘take’ on this. My prof at Gordon-Conwell, Roger Nicole, used to say that there were many perspectives on the atonement, but the one theme that ran through them all was substitution. Christus Victor, for example, means Jesus fought for us, in our place, we didn’t do it, he did it. And so ‘penal’ substitution is the perspective of the law court, and ‘ransom’ substitution is the perspective of the marketplace, and ‘Christus Victor’ substitution is the perspective of the battlefield, and ’sacrificial’ substitution is the perspective of the temple/tabernacle. They all get at it differently, but the one commonality is substitution. God came and substituted himself for us–so we could be saved from sin. Nicole wrote this up in a little afterword to his festshrift ‘The Glory of the Atonement’.
Nicole is right. The in common feature of all these ideas ya’ll are kick’in around is the word substitution. However it would behoove you to see and perhaps read what God says about substitution when a man is the sacrifice and his life is taken by bloodshed. So my question to you fellows is, who are ya’ll gonna believe God or what you think is right?
1. There is no case of any man’s life taken by bloodshed by which God does not demand an accounting as a residual issue to be resolved.
2. There is only one case of a man’s life taken by bloodshed by which God has established by law that each man too must give a direct accounting to God as a residual issue to be resolved or if not be subjected to eternal death.
Gen. 9:5 Niv.
The crucifixion of Jesus was not a substitution even though Roger Nicole may have said it is. All of these ideas ya’ll are batting around are false by God’s oath.