In the paper, Lewis argued that we all, Christians and atheists alike, agree that it is wrong to incarcerate or execute a substitute in place of the person who committed the crime. However, he says, we also both agree that it is okay for a substitute to pay a fine (monetary penalty) or make compensation to a victim in the stead of the one who committed the crime. He writes:
What function would we have to ascribe to punishment in order to make it make sense to punish an innocent substitute?—A compensatory function. Suppose that the offender’s punishment were seen mainly as a benefit to the victim, a benefit sufficient to undo whatever loss the offender had inflicted upon him. Then the source of the benefit wouldn’t matter. If the offender’s innocent friend provided the benefit, the compensatory function would be served, no less than if the offender himself provided it (p. 309).Lewis says that its not just Christians who are "double-minded" with regard to penal substitution, he says:
All of us—atheists and agnostics, believers of other persuasions, the lot—are likewise of two minds about penal substitution. We do not believe that the offender’s friend can serve the offender’s prison sentence, or his death sentence. Neither can the friend serve the offender’s sentence of flogging, transportation, or hard labour. But we do believe—do we not?—that the friend can pay the offender’s fine.Yet this is just as much a case of penal substitution as the others (p. 311).He concludes that perhaps non-believers ought not be so quick to condemn the logic of the Penal Substitutionary Theory (PST) of the atonement. If we agree that it works in some cases (monetary fines), then perhaps, it could work in other cases, such as the death of Jesus in the stead of sinners. He states:
It indicates that both sides agree that penal substitution sometimes makes sense after all, even if none can say how it makes sense. And if both sides agree to that, that is some evidence that somehow they might both be right (p. 313).Is Lewis correct? One often hears defenders of the PST compare the price paid by Jesus on the cross with the payment of a debt. Since debts obviously can be transferred, then perhaps it does make sense to say that Jesus paid the penalty (even though it was not a monetary fine) for man's sin.
I don't think Lewis is correct, however. While we allow a substitute to pay the fine or monetary debt of another, it is not analogous to the PST of the atonement. In the PST, Jesus bears the guilt of man's sin. A substitute who pays the fine owed in place of his friend does not bear his friend's guilt. I came across a comment on another blog that I thought explained this point very well. A poster who calls himself AK Mike said:
Hello--not a philosopher, but a lawyer. I think the premise here is wrong--we do not allow substitution in the case of fines. The criminal remains responsible for paying the fine--she cannot delegate this responsibility to another party. Even if another party agrees to pay, if that payment is defaulted, the court will look to the criminal to cure the default, not the other party.
Having another pay a criminal's fine is just a way of describing where the money comes from that the criminal obtains to pay the fine. It is inherent in the nature of a fine as punishment that the money to pay it will have to come from somewhere--from wages, from an inheritance, from a gift--where it comes from is not relevant to the question of who is being punished. The court records will always show the criminal has having paid, not some third party.
My first attempt to comment seems to have disappeared...
ReplyDeleteI don't get this at all. Lewis himself describes the purpose of the fine as being compensation, which is a tangible benefit, to the victim. Penal substitution is supposed to be simply punishment for wrong doing.
If the purpose is a tangible benefit, it shouldn't matter who it comes from. A fine as noted in the lawyer's quote is different, it is a punishment, like a form of (financial) flogging.
Lewis seems to be glibly conflating the two forms of punishment.. Does God have a direct and tangible need for blood, apart from punishment for wrong deeds? Lewis' argument seems overly simplistic, or am I missing something?
"It is inherent in the nature of a fine as punishment that the money to pay it will have to come from somewhere ..."
ReplyDeleteAll our actual notions of 'economy' fail when you try to make one of its participants Omni™. It's an easy intuitional hook to speak of debts and ledgers but it's all nonsense, by definition it would seem, to speak of infinity at the same time. Nonsense.
Ken,
ReplyDeleteThanks again for bringing in viewpoints from so many different angles on this issue! Unlike many of the theologians, Lewis at least brings in a variety of views on what punishment is supposed to accomplish. And he actually brings up compensation to victims (see more on this below)!
I have one problem with his conclusion. He says near the end of the article,
The risk of de facto penal substitution ought to be a frequently mentioned drawback of punishment by fines. It is not. And that is why I maintain that all of us, not just some Christians, are of two minds about penal substitution.
If -- and this is a big "if" -- punishment by fines is meant to serve another purpose besides compensation of the victim, I agree with him 100% that "penal substitution" should be considered a serious problem. He asserts earlier on that compensation of the victim is by and large NOT a purpose for assessment of fines in our system. I challenge that assertion. And I would surely like to see some evidence that the people he says should and yet do not express problems with fines are working on the assumption that fines are imposed as a punishment more than as a means of compensation to victims. Let's say he is right. There is some group whose consensus opinion is that it is OK for people to be punished with fines for serious crimes and then for someone else to actually pay the fine on their behalf. Why did he not identify them so I could write to my state rep., congressperson, senator, etc. and see to that people of this persuasion are removed from their jobs?
Lewis argues that if our sentencing system were more focused on compensating victims, "penal substitution" would make more sense to us. I think his point has merit. I think he is also correct that compensation for victims is NOT a central feature of our sentencing system. We leave that to civil courts. IMO, separating punishment and compensation for victims is a serious shortcoming of our criminal justice system. This is a political, not theological, issue.
But Lewis brings up, unintentionally I presume, what in my opinion is one of the dirtiest obscenities in the Christian teaching of final judgment. Does he intend to suggest that punishments against sin are meant to compensate God the victim? He never says so. But as soon as you reflect on the NT teaching on God's judgment in these terms a huge lacuna pops out at you. In the final judgment God gets to select the plaintiffs whose cases get heard. Of course, he is the main complainant, and it is offenses against him that get us condemned. If you are one of the elect, you get compensated for the evils done to you. If you are not one of the elect, you get your day in court alright ... to be condemned as a sinner and cast into the "Lake of Fire." There is no evidence anywhere in the NT that your complaint even gets heard, much less nullified. Even if you get to testify that somebody did you harm (also not indicated in the NT), that is only to provide convicting evidence for God's complaints. What compensation do you get? What happened to the "defender of widows and orphans?" He has been tranformed into a cosmic despot and defender of a religious sect.
I have always thought it unfair that parents should be held legally responsible for what their teenage children do, in terms of paying fines for them. As the children themselves are usually unable to pay the fines, the parents end up having to do that for them. It is assumed that parents are somehow responsible, and sometimes they are in terms of setting a bad example,being alcoholics, abusive etc. but often they are quite unable to control an older child's antisocial behavior.
ReplyDeleteHowever, parents cannot do a prison spell on behalf of the child.
Most fines do not go to compensate the victim. They are just absorbed into the system.If someone else other than the guilty party pays the fine, then it is obviously ineffective as a form of punishment.
Another problem is that there is a difference between the following two statements:
ReplyDeleteIf someone wants to pay the monetary fine of a friend, we should not stop them,
and,
When someone pays the monetary fine of a friend, justice has been done.
The first has a lot to do with issues of pragmatics. Its not clear how we could possibly stop someone from doing this. After all, even if the court refused to permit it, they could just transfer the money privately, then have the guilty party pay the fine with the gifted money.
The latter is about what we think is right or wrong, and I can quite easily see feeling a sense of injustice that someone paid someone else's fine. Imagine the simplest example in the world: a teenager commits crimes that result in monetary fines, and is shielded from the consequences by parents who swoop in and pay the fine.
On a related note... is moral intuition about every day crime and punishment really a good prospect for the religious apologist who wishes to defend penal substitution? Normal criminal penalties have goals like teaching a lesson, or protecting society from the criminal by means of confinement. Normal criminal penalties adhere to concepts like proportionality, and the importance of dividing the innocent and the guilty. Christianity's world view, by contrast, invokes infinite, unending agony for all persons, no matter how great or small their crimes, and considers all persons guilty by their very nature. Moral intuition about crime and punishment seems to judge Christianity as the most vile of punishment systems imaginable.
Hi Ken,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your post. I have also had a crack at Lewis' argument, from a slightly different angle: http://rationesola.blogspot.com/2009/09/de-facto-and-de-jure-penal-substitution.html
Sola,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the link. You make some great points!
Sola,
ReplyDeleteI would like to re-post your posts on penal substitution on my site. Send me an email
pulliam at mail (dot) com.
"we do not allow substitution in the case of fines. The criminal remains responsible for paying the fine--she cannot delegate this responsibility to another party. Even if another party agrees to pay, if that payment is defaulted, the court will look to the criminal to cure the default, not the other party."
ReplyDeleteHello, philosopher here, not a lawyer. I think this analysis is mistaken. The reality is that a third party can indeed take on someone's (the criminal's) debt. This is really too obvious. A legal transfer of the original debt is certainly possible and the third party is then on the hook so far as the courts are concerned. How can a lawyer possibly not know this?? "The court records will always show the criminal has having paid, not some third party." - That part is true, but utterly irrelevant to the issue of penal substitution.
"Christianity's world view, by contrast, invokes infinite, unending agony for all persons, no matter how great or small their crimes, and considers all persons guilty by their very nature." -- *headsmack* (Need I say more?)
ReplyDelete