Rustin Umstattd on Penal Substitution and the Trinity

Rustin J. Umstattd is Assistant Professor of Theology at Midwestern Baptist Seminary (SBC) in Kansas City, Missouri. He presented a paper in 2008 at the annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society entitled, "A Trinitarian Crucifixion: The Holy Spirit and Substitutionary Atonement." In the paper he deals with the Holy Spirit's role in the Atonement, an often neglected topic. My interest in his paper relates to how he deals with the theological problem of one member of the Trinity (the Son) being punished by another member of the Trinity (the Father). The punishment endured by Jesus, according to defenders of the Penal Substitutionary Theory (PST) of the atonement, is spiritual death which entails separation from God. The difficult question which all defenders of the PST must attempt to answer is how can one member of the Trinity be separated from another member without causing a breach in the supposed eternal unity of the Godhead. According to A.T.B. McGowan this is the most difficult problem posed by the PST of the atonement. He says:

Let me say that I fully understand the difficulty that attaches to this subject of the Son bearing the wrath of the Father, and I fully respect the theological complexity involved in maintaining penal substitution in the light of the need for a careful delineating of the relationship between the Father and the Son. In my view, this is the strongest theological argument to be faced by any doctrine of penal substitution (Always Reforming: Explorations in Systematic Theology [2006], p. 199).

The moment that appears to demonstrate the separation between the Father and Son is when Jesus crys from the cross: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Matt. 27:46). While some have argued that Jesus only felt abandoned by the Father, defenders of the PST, who understand the logic behind the theory, must maintain that there was an actual abandonement. As Umstattd argues:

Jesus’ cry of dereliction in which he quotes Ps 22:1 should not be viewed as a cry of victory in which the entirety of the Psalm is in focus, as a cry of unbelief or despair, or a cry of abandonment in which Jesus only felt forsaken, but was not in actuality.

He, however, adds an important caveat: One must be able to both maintain the abandonment of the Son with the unity of the Trinity that remains unbroken. He believes that it is the Holy Spirit who maintains this unity between the Father and the Son.

Can one say that Jesus was actually abandoned by the Father, though, without breaking the unity of the Trinity? It doesn't seem possible to me. Being abandoned, forsaken, or separated is incongruent with the notion of unity. The unity envisioned in the classic doctrine of the Trinity is not merely a unity of purpose but a unity of being. Each person is said to indwell the other persons. The theological term sometimes used to refer to this is perichoresis. This is a Greek term used to describe the triune relationship between each person of the Godhead. It can be defined as co-indwelling, co-inhering, and mutual interpenetration (Theopedia). Jürgen Moltmann says regarding perichoresis:

{T]his concept grasps the circulatory character of the eternal divine life. An eternal life process takes place in the triune God through the exchange of energies. The Father exists in the Son, the Son in the Father, and both of them in the Spirit, just as the Spirit exists in both the Father and the Son. By virtue of their eternal love they live in one another to such an extent, and dwell in one another to such an extent, that they are one. . . . The unity of the triunity lies in the eternal perichoresis of the trinitarian persons (The Trinity and the Kingdom: The Doctrine of God,  pp. 174-75).

Umstattd recognizes the problem when he says:

[W]hen Jesus experienced the Father’s wrath upon the cross and he cried out from the depths of his being the lament of dereliction, the Son was not separated from the Father and the Spirit ontologically, but experientially.

I am not sure how one can be united ontologically and perichoretically and yet experientially be separated. It seems the only way this could happen is if one only felt as if one was separated, but Umstattd maintains the separation was actual and not merely "felt."


Another problem that Umstattd and defenders of the PST face is that if the separation was actual, then not only would there a breach in the unity of the Trinity but there would be a breach in the unity of the person of Christ. Chalcedonian Christology maintains that the two natures, divinity and humanity, dwell together in one single person--Jesus Christ--who is both God and man and yet one person. Is the divine nature in Christ estranged from his human nature on the cross or is it estranged from the Father and the Spirit? It seems that it would have to be one or the other.

Umstattd apparently holds that in one sense the Father and Son were separated on the cross but in another sense they were united by the Spirit. It is almost as if the Spirit is some kind of personal conduit who keeps the two connected even though they are actually separated. He writes:

[I]n the event in which God the Father pours out his wrath upon God the Son, the Spirit is both the bond of love that unites the two even in the separation, and conversely, the Spirit also applies to the Son the Father’s wrath, which is nothing other than the wrath of all three persons together.

He explains further:

[T]he abandonment of the Father was a far deeper suffering. From the depths of his being, he cried out, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani!” In popular terms, the Father turned his back upon the Son because he could not look upon the sin laid upon him. In this forsakenness, Jesus was left alone on the cross to bear the full weight of judgment. At this point, the Spirit is the bond that holds the Trinity together. While that is assuredly correct, it fails to capture another element of the Spirit’s work, his actualizing of the Father’s judgment given to the Son, in which the Son comes under his own judgment. When Jesus experienced the abandonment of the Father, it was executed by and in the Spirit as the one who actualizes God’s interaction with humanity. The abandonment of the Father was experienced by Jesus in the Spirit, while at the same time, underneath and in concert with the abandonment the Spirit held the Father and Son together in unity.

I don't see how Umstattd's position avoids contradiction. If two persons are separated, another person may serve as an intermediary between the two, but if the third person is actually a personal conduit through which the connection is ontologically maintained, then there is no actual separation between the persons. If  the God-man is not actually separated from the Trinity on the cross, then he does not endure spiritual death. And since spiritual death is the penalty for sin, he does not endure the penalty for sin thus negating the PST of the atonement.