Eleonore Stump on the Atonement--Paper Delivered at Plantinga Retirement

Eleonore Stump recently gave a paper at the Alvin Plantinga Retirement Celebration at Notre Dame University. She explores how a theory of the atonement needs to provide a solution to the problem of evil in the world. This grows out of a paper written by Alvin Plantinga entitled: Supralapsarianism, in which he argues that the good that comes from the atonement explains why God allowed evil to come about. E.J. Coffman, a Ph.D. graduate who studied under Plantinga makes the response.

The whole video series lasts 90 minutes and provides some good insights into the problems associated with the Anselmian and the Thomistic views of the atonement.

Part One



Part Two



Part Three



Part Four--problems with Anselmian and Thomisitic views



Part Five--problems with Anselmian and Thomisitic views



Part Six--cry of dereliction



Part Seven



Part Eight



Part Nine

More on Aquinas' View of the Atonement (Eleonore Stump)

Eleonore Stump is the Robert J. Henle Professor of Philosophy at St. Louis University, a Roman Catholic Jesuit school. She is one of the leading authorities on the teachings of Thomas Aquinas. She wrote a book detailing his theological system entitled simply,  Aquinas (Routledge, 2003). In chapter 15 of the work, she writes a chapter on Aquinas' view of the Atonement.

Some scholars have maintained that Aquinas really taught Penal Substitution (for example, Pierced for Our Transgressions: Rediscovering the Glory of Penal Substitution by Steve Jeffery, Michael Ovey, Andrew Sach, pp. 184-85, and What About the Cross? by Waldron Byron Scott, pp. 92-98). Stump says its easy to see why some have come to this conclusion. Aquinas' language at first glance does seem to agree with the PST. The angelic doctor wrote:

Accordingly, Christ also willed to suffer death for our sins so that, without any fault of His own by himself bearing the penalty we owed [emphasis mine], he might free us from the sentence of death, in the way that anyone would be freed from a penalty he owed if another person undertook the penalty for him [emphasis mine] (Aquinas, Compendium of Theology, 227 cited by Stump, p. 431).

However, Aquinas made a distinction between two different kinds of "punishment": simple punishment (poena simpliciter ) and punishment as satisfaction (poena secundum quid). Someone has offered the following example to illustrate the distinction: A husband offends his wife. He can be punished (poena simpliciter ) by his wife (made to sleep on the couch) or he can offer a gift to his wife along with his remorse and love (poena secundum quid) and she can accept it as sufficient penalty for the husband's sin. Simple punishment comes upon a unrepentant person for his crime and it is received against his will. Punishment as satisfaction is offered by a repentant person for his crime and it is done voluntarily. The former is completely negative in connotation and the punishment is meted out in accordance with the severity of the crime (strict retributive justice). The latter is positive in connotation in that it results in a reconciliation between offender and offended and the punishment (as satisfaction) is accepted by the offended party as adequate to forgive the offense (less strict retributive justice). The latter is "punishment" in the sense that the offender suffers (loss or harm) in providing the offering but it is not "punishment" in the simple or most basic sense of the word (for more on this distinction, see here). In the PST, however, Jesus suffers simple punishment in place of sinners. Aquinas denies this and says that an innocent person cannot receive simple punishment (poena simpliciter; for more on this see here).

With that confusion out of the way, Stump turns to an explanation of Aquinas' view of the atonement.

1. The Atonement was not required to forgive sin.

Contrary to the PST adherents, Aquinas does not maintain that God would have sacrificed his holiness if he had chosen to forgive man's sin without the death of Jesus. Aquinas wrote:

[A] judge who has to punish a fault committed against another … cannot remit the fault or penalty without injustice. But God has no one superior to him; rather he himself is the highest and universal good of the whole world. And for this reason, if [God] remits sin, which is defined as a fault from its being committed against [God] himself, he does no one an injury, just as any human being who, without [requiring] satisfaction, remits an offense committed against himself does not act unjustly but is merciful (Summa Theologica , IIIa.46.2 and 3, cited by Stump, p. 431).

2. The atonement was the best way for God to forgive sin.

Something is said to be necessary for an end in two ways. In one way, [as] that without which something cannot be…; in another way, [as] that by means of which one arrives at the end in a better and more suitable manner, as, for example, a horse is necessary for a journey. In the first way, it was not necessary for God to become incarnate in order to restore human nature, for by his omnipotent power God was able to restore human nature in many other ways. But in the second way it was necessary for God to become incarnate in order to restore human nature (Aquinas, Summa Theologica IIIa.1.2 cited by Stump, p. 431).

3. The purpose of the atonement is to restore the sinner to harmony with God.

Stump writes:

Aquinas’s emphasis in his discussion ... is on the sinner, not on the person sinned against. So, for example, Aquinas sees penance in general as a kind of medicine for sin. It consists in detesting one’s sin and purposing to change one’s life for the better, and it aims primarily at the restoration of friendship between the wrongdoer and the one wronged. In discussing the remission of sins, which is on his view the goal of penance, Aquinas maintains that sins are remitted when the soul of the offender is at peace with the one offended.... So the function of satisfaction for Aquinas is not to placate a wrathful God or in some other way remove the constraints which compel God to damn sinners. Instead, the function of satisfaction is to restore a sinner to a state of harmony with God by repairing or restoring in the sinner what sin has damaged (p. 432).

Stump illustrates Aquinas' view of how the atonement works with the following example:

We can understand the gist of Aquinas’s idea about the way in which the making of satisfaction for a wrong done achieves this end by considering a homely example of minor evil. Suppose Anna is the mother of a feisty boy, Nathan, who loves soccer. Anna, on the other hand, loves flowers and has asked her son repeatedly not to play soccer on the side of the house where her flower beds are. But Nathan does play with his soccer ball near the flower beds, and the inevitable occurs: some of the flowers are trampled. Nathan, however, is so interested in his ball playing that he stops just long enough to run into the house and say,“Sorry, Mom, I trampled your flowers” before he returns to his game. What he has done then presents his mother with two problems, one regarding the flowers and one regarding her son. She has lost some of her flowers, and it will take her some time and energy and money to replace them. But her real problem is with her son, as she must see. In the first place, he does not love what she loves; if he had had any care for the flowers, he would have played with his soccer ball in a different place. And second, he does not love her as she would like him to do, because although he knows she loves her flowers, he does not have a care for the flowers for her sake. So what Nathan has done has created some distance between himself and his mother. His will and hers are not in harmony, and he does not love her as he might.

In the example, in recognition of his misdeed, Nathan has offered only a hasty and casual apology and nothing more. If, however, he had any real care for his mother or her flowers, if he were really sorry for what he has done, he would also have done what he could to fix the damage. And his mother would have been very glad of his efforts, even if they were clumsy and ultimately unsuccessful, because they would have manifested a change of heart: after the fact, at any rate, Nathan would have had a care for his mother and for her flowers. And so by his efforts at undoing the damage caused by his action, he would have restored a harmony of will and love between himself and his mother which his wrong action had disrupted. In Aquinas’s terms, Nathan would then have made satisfaction for his sin. The chief value of this satisfaction is not so much that it restores Anna’s flowers. If Nathan’s efforts are clumsy enough, the flowers may even be worse off than if he had not tried to improve their condition. Rather, the value of the satisfaction is that it restores the harmonious and loving relationship between Anna and her son (pp. 432-33)

4. The atonement is a case of vicarious satisfaction.

Aquinas argues that in the case of satisfaction, another person can pay the penalty owed by the offender. He writes:

Although when it comes to punishment of sins, the person who sinned is the one who must be punished…, nonetheless when it comes to satisfaction one person can bear the penalty of another. [This is] because when a penalty for a sin is inflicted, the iniquity of the person who is punished is weighed; but, in the case of satisfaction, when someone voluntarily assumes a penalty in order to please someone who was wronged, the charity and benevolence of the person making satisfaction is considered (Summa Contra Gentiles,, cited by Stump, p. 434). IV, 55

Going back to the illustration of Nathan and the destroyed flowers, Stump introduces the concept of vicarious satisfaction.

Suppose that Nathan is too little to make any satisfaction himself. Perhaps to rectify the damage he would need to buy and plant new flowers, but he has no money and is too small either to go to the store or to use a shovel. If he is truly sorry for trampling the flowers, what can he do? Suppose that he has an older brother Aaron, who can do what Nathan cannot. And suppose that Nathan explains his predicament to his brother and asks his brother to buy flowers and plant them for him. If Aaron loves his brother enough, he may then use his own time and money to undo his brother’s mischief. If Nathan’s will really is set on some restitution for his misdeed, he will have returned to harmony with his mother even if all the actual work of restitution was done solely by Aaron. In this context, just in virtue of allying himself with Aaron’s restitution, Nathan shows he cares for his mother and for the things she values; and so he restores the close relationship with his mother although Aaron is the one who restores the garden (pp. 434-35).

Stump says the above example shows how it is possible for one to make satisfaction for another's sin. She writes:

In this way, then, it is possible for one person to make satisfaction for another’s sins. Because, on Aquinas’s view, the point of making satisfaction is to return the wrongdoer’s will to conformity with the will of the person wronged, rather than to inflict retributive punishment on the wrongdoer or to placate the person wronged, it is possible for the satisfaction to be made by a substitute, provided that the wrongdoer allies himself with the substitute in willing to undo as far as possible the damage he has done (p. 435).

Finally, Stump alters the story to make it align better with the doctrine of the atonement.

Or, finally, suppose that Nathan shows no signs of any interest in restitution or reconciliation with his mother. If Anna were, like the mother of Aeneas, endowed with the power of transforming herself, and if she really loved her son, she might appear to him in disguise and in that disguise try to talk him into letting her make his restitution for him. If we think of the problem between Nathan and Anna as consisting in her loss of flowers or her distress over the damage to the flowers, then, of course, this story is just farcical, for in this story Anna is in effect giving flowers to herself. But if we understand, as Aquinas does, that the real problem lies in Nathan’s will, which is turned away from his mother’s, and if we suppose not that Anna is wrathful and vengeful towards her son but rather deeply loving, then the story makes good sense. For by this complicated and somewhat demeaning method Anna may succeed in turning her son’s will and love back to her, so that the harmony of their relationship is restored. As long as Nathan wills heartily to undo the wrong he did, it does not matter whether he himself or someone else, including even Anna, actually does the work of making restitution. And this version of the story of Anna and Nathan is analogous in relevant respects to the vicarious satisfaction of the atonement, on Aquinas’s understanding of the notion of making satisfaction (pp. 435-36).

5. The atonement rectifies the root problem which leads to sin.

In general, a person sins by preferring his own immediate power or pleasure over greater goods. Human sin has pride and selfishness at its root, then, and it constitutes disobedience to God, whose will it contravenes. So what is most directly ruined by the sins human beings have committed is human intellect and will; a proud, selfish, disobedient mind and heart are the theological analogue of the trampled garden.. . .

The restoration involved in making satisfaction for human sinning, then, is a matter of presenting God with an instance of human nature which is marked by perfect obedience, humility, and charity and which is at least as precious in God’s eyes as the marring of humanity by sin is offensive. But this is just what the second person of the Trinity does by taking on human nature and voluntarily suffering a painful and shameful death. By being willing to move from the exaltation of deity to the humiliation of crucifixion, Christ shows boundless humility; and by consenting to suffer the agony of his passion and death because God willed it when something in his own nature shrank powerfully from it, Christ manifests absolute obedience. Finally, because he undertakes all his suffering and humiliation out of love for sinful human beings, Christ exhibits the most intense charity. So in his passion and death Christ restores what sin has marred in human nature, because he gives God a particularly precious instance of human nature with the greatest possible humility, obedience, and charity. So one answer to the question why Christ had to suffer is that humility, obedience, and charity are present in suffering that is voluntarily and obediently endured for someone else’s sake in a way in which they could not be, for example, in Christ’s preaching or healing the sick. In this way, then, because of his divine nature and because of the extent of his humility, obedience, and charity, Christ made satisfaction for all the sins of the human race (pp. 438-39).

Here are some problems with this view as I see them.

1. The Atonement was not required to forgive sin.

If the atonement was not required in order to forgive sin then it seems that the death of Jesus was in a sense gratuitous. Granted that Aquinas says that God chose this method because of the goods that would result, but it still seems God chose a particularly violent and one might argue sadistic way to do it. What Jonathan Edwards wrote against the Socinians would apply equally here to the theory of Aquinas:

In short, since God could have forgiven men their trespasses without any satisfaction, which would have been an act of true bounty and liberality, and as such it is everywhere proclaimed in the Scriptures; why would he desire Christ first to pay him the debt, and then that he might liberally remit it? What is this but to take a needless circuit, to go a great way about to compass that, which might have been effected more compendiously; and indeed can be nothing less that downright collusion and imposture?

...Add to all this, that since God could pardon the sins of men out of mere grace and bounty, now to make him require strict payment and satisfaction to his Justice before he do so; is, say they, an argument of barbarous and savage cruelty, rather than kindness and liberality (A Preservative against Socinianism [1698], pp. 126 and 129).

2. The atonement was the best way for God to forgive sin.

This seems to be a mere assertion or assumption on Aquinas' part. How does one know that atonement was the best way? It seems that since the Bible teaches atonement and since Aquinas believes that the Bible is the Word of God, and since in his concept of God, God must always act in a perfect manner, therefore atonement must be the best way to bring about the forgiveness of sin. It seems to me that this is merely "begging the question."

3. The purpose of the atonement is to restore the sinner to harmony with God.

Stump uses the illustration of Nathan destroying his mother's flower garden in direct disobedience to his mother's command not to play soccer near the garden. She argues that Nathan can be restored to harmony with his mother through showing remorse and then acting to restore the garden. His mother may forgive him on the basis of his attempt to restore what he has done wrong but more importantly on the basis of his remorse and repentance. If that is true, then the atonement can be accomplished by the sinner himself. This, of course, flies in the face of the NT passages which state that man cannot please God on his own. He must have a mediator between himself and God.

4. The atonement is a case of vicarious satisfaction.

While Stump and Aquinas acknowledge that God could forgive sins without satisfaction being made, simply on the basis of the sinner's repentance and remorse; they nevertheless argue that it is better or more fitting if God requires satisfaction. Since in the story about the flower bed, Nathan is unable himself to repair the damage he has done, his brother Aaron (who is innocent) offers to repair it on his behalf. While the innocent brother could not be punished by the mother for something he did not do, he can voluntarily repair the damage done by his guilty brother out of love for his brother.

This seems problematic to me for at least two reasons: a) the mother is still going to forgive the guilty son on the basis of his remorse and repentance. The fact that the brother repaired the damage becomes an auxiliary fact, unless somehow the brother's repair of the damage leads to the remorse and repentance in the guilty brother. While this is certainly possible, at this point the view of Aquinas becomes essentially the same as Abelard's Moral Exemplar Theory. In other words, the atonement is designed to impact man not God. This contradicts many NT passages which make it clear that the atonement propitiates God. The atonement is the basis on which God is able to justly forgive sin (e.g., Rom. 3:21-26). If I am reading the NT correctly, then the grounds for God's forgiveness of sin is the death of Jesus, which in the story is analogous to the brother's repair of the garden. Yet, as I have pointed out, in the story, the repair of the garden is not the basis for the mother's forgiveness, it is the remorse and repentance of the guilty son.

b) In the flower garden story, the innocent brother, Aaron, repairs the garden on his brother's behalf. Although this involves some time and effort on Aaron's part, it's hard to envision this constituting punishment (even punishment as satisfaction); working in the garden might actually be pleasurable for Aaron. It is very difficult to see how this compares with Jesus suffering and dying. The NT presents Jesus as submitting to the will of his Father in going to the cross and at least his human nature at times did not want to submit--it certainly was not something pleasurable but was clearly an act of punishment that he obediently endured.

5. The atonement rectifies the root problem which leads to sin.

Stump argues that the life and death of Jesus is an acceptable sacrifice to God for man's sin because Jesus gives God a particularly precious instance of human nature with the greatest possible humility, obedience, and charity . This gift of obedience involves even submitting to a violent execution which was wrongfully imposed upon him. Somehow, in Aquinas' and Stump's view, this sacrifice is deemed as acceptable satisfaction for the harm done by man's sin and thus becomes a vicarious satisfaction in lieu of man being punished for his own sin. It seems that the only way that God can accept the sacrifice of Jesus in lieu of the punishment of man's sin is that somehow the sacrifice of Jesus accomplishes the same thing that the punishment of man's sin would accomplish. If that is the case, then it seems impossible to escape the conclusion that Jesus suffered a similar fate that sinful man would suffer if he died in his sins. In one way or another, an innocent person is being asked to suffer in the place of the one who deserves the suffering. I continue to maintain that the suffering of an innocent person cannot accomplish justice.

Thomas Aquinas' View of the Atonement

In yesterday's post, I discussed the different understandings of Anselm, Aquinas, and Calvin relative to punishment and satisfaction. Anselm and Aquinas are both highly respected Roman Catholic theologians (and saints of the church), while Calvin, of course, is a Protestant and the formulator of the Penal Substitutionary Theory (PST) of the Atonement. Catholics for the most part (for an exception see, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theodrama IV: The Action) repudiate the PST. In John Joy's Master's Thesis on the Atonement ("Poena Satisfactoria: Locating Thomas Aquinas's Doctrine of Vicarious Satisfaction in between Anselmian Satisfaction and Penal Substitution" [Austria: International Theological Institute, 2010]), he maintains that Aquinas' view of the atonement escapes one of the main difficulties of the PST, namely, the injustice of punishing an innocent person in place of the guilty. I wish to examine that point in today's post.

It is true that in Aquinas' view of the Atonement, Jesus is not punished by the Father for man's sin, as he is in the PST. Rather, Jesus' life and death are offered up as a sacrifice to the Father and the Father accepts that sacrifice as sufficient satisfaction for man's sin. Aquinas' view does escape some problems faced by adherents of the PST, namely, how one member of the Trinity could be punished by another member and how one member of the Trinity could endure spiritual death (i.e., separation from God). These are very serious theological problems which any defender of the PST must face. However, does Aquinas' view escape the problem of how an innocent person can suffer in place of the guilty? I don't think it does. While Jesus is not technically being punished in Aquinas' view, he is still suffering and he is doing it in lieu of the punishment that sinners deserve. The Father accepts his life and death as satisfactory to eliminate the punishment of believers.

An important question at this point is: "How can God accept the death of an innocent person as satisfactory payment for the penalty owed by the guilty?" It seems inescapable to me that some form of substitution is taking place here. The death of Jesus is being accepted by the Father as a satisfactory substitute for the penalty owed by sinners. Joy attempts to answer the problem:

While there is nothing at all contrary to justice in one man voluntarily taking upon himself a certain penalty in order to satisfy for another’s sin, it would be manifestly unjust for a judge to inflict a punishment upon an innocent man no matter how willing he is to accept it. The point at issue is the agent of the act. As an act of vindictive justice, punishment belongs to the judge, while satisfaction belongs to the penitent as an act of the virtue of penance. Hence, whereas it is an act of virtue to take a penalty upon oneself in order to satisfy for a friend, it would be nonetheless vicious for a judge to inflict a penalty upon the innocent in place of the guilty, even if the innocent party were willing to accept it. Since satisfaction is made by the voluntary assumption of penal works, there can be no question of injustice on the part of the judge, who merely accepts the voluntary offering of the innocent friend as sufficient and therefore inflicts no punishment on the guilty (nor indeed on anyone). Penal substitution theories go astray precisely when they regard Christ’s death as a punishment actively inflicted on him by God the Father, rather than as a voluntary act of satisfaction on the part of Christ, which is permitted and accepted by the Father (pp. 50-51).

I see several problems with this explanation. First, it is not at all clear from Scripture that the Father is not involved in the death of Jesus. The NT consistently states that Jesus came to earth and died in order to fulfill the Father's plan (Rom. 8:32; Acts 2:23) and that he was obedient to the Father's plan (Phil. 2:8; Heb. 5:8; Jn. 10:18) even though he struggled with it in Gethsemane (Matt. 26:42; Mk. 14:36; Lk. 22:42; Jn. 12:27). So, while Aquinas may be correct in saying that the Father is not the direct agent in Jesus' death in the sense that the Father is himself punishing the Son; nevertheless, it does not seem to lessen the Father's culpability in the death by saying that he allowed others to do the "dirty work." If one plans a crime and then allows others to carry out the plan, one is still guilty of the crime. If one says that the executioners of Jesus meant it for evil but God meant it for good (as in the case of Joseph's brothers in Gen. 50:20), it still involves moral problems. At the least, it seems that God is guilty of moral relativism, i.e., the end justifies the means.

Second, why is the death of Jesus needed to satisfy God? It seems that the Scriptural answer to this is that death (specifically a bloody death) is necessary to take away sin. The author of Hebrews states it this way: without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins (9:22). Paul says that the wages of sin is death (Rom. 6:23). The clear implication in Scripture is that death is the penalty for sin (cf. Gen. 2:17). So, it seems that the reason Jesus died was in order to pay the penalty for sin; otherwise his death was unnecessary. If God could forgive man's sin without a bloody sacrificial death, then it seems cruel and sadistic for God to have come up with this plan for redemption. One must ask at this point, what kind of person (human or divine) takes pleasure (cf. Isa. 53:10) in the torture and death of another person? It definitely seems to be unworthy of a perfectly holy God.

Third, it is still not clear how God can justly accept the suffering of one in place of another. Anselm and Aquinas make a distinction between punishment and satisfaction. Joy uses the illustration of a man who offends his wife being able 1) to make satisfaction for the offense by giving her flowers (and being remorseful) or 2) to be punished for the offense by being forced to sleep on the couch. He says that either one serves justice. While one can see this to be the case in the example given, how could another person step in and offer flowers to the wife in place of her husband and the wife accept the offering as satisfaction for what her husband did? It doesn't make sense. Joy attempts an explanation:

On account of the union of charity between two friends, the satisfaction made by one on the other’s behalf really becomes in a way also the act of the other, for charity regards a friend as another self and suffers with the suffering friend: “and thus punishment is not lacking to him, as long as he suffers with his suffering friend; and so much the more fully as he himself is the cause of his suffering" (Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles III, cap. 158, n. 7 cited in Joy, pp. 49-50).

So, Aquinas is saying that a friend of the offender can offer a gift to the offended party on behalf of the offender and the offended party is justified in accepting it as if it came from the offender himself. He says that the offender is also suffering along with his friend because he realizes that his offense is the cause for the sacrifice that his friend is making. I am not sure what type of justice this illustrates but it is not retributive justice. I think the Bible clearly teaches retributive justice and whatever view of the atonement one holds must align with this view of justice.

Aquinas maintains that God's wrath against sin is "satisfied," or "propitiated" by the death of Jesus. Joy writes:

[F]rom Thomas's point of view . . .the wrath of God is appeased by Christ’s sacrifice. Wrath that is “appeased” or “propitiated” is precisely not poured out, but rather assuaged. A wrathful person is appeased when his anger is calmed, not when it is unleashed in all its fury, whether upon the guilty or the innocent (p. 52).

Let me propose an illustration of this type of "justice." A man commits a rape against my child. While he is in jail, before the trial, he is beaten to a pulp by other inmates and is paralyzed. I meet with the criminal and he is extremely remorseful for his action of raping my child. Seeing the suffering that he has endured, and that he will be paralyzed for the rest of his life, I forgive the man and drop the charges. Would a prosecutor be willing to forego prosecution of the criminal under these conditions? If so, is that justice? It seems more like sympathy or mercy extended to the criminal than it does the exercise of justice. Of course, if one tries to introduce a surrogate who suffers in place of the criminal thereby resulting in the charges being dismissed, the issue becomes even more problematic. Let's imagine that the rapist has a twin brother who happens to be arrested by the police and put in jail by mistake. The innocent twin is beaten up by the inmates and is paralyzed. The guilty twin is devastated and he is not only remorseful for his act of rape but he feels terrible because it has resulted in the suffering of his innocent brother. Would the prosecutor be willing to drop charges against the guilty brother? How could the suffering inflicted upon the innocent twin pay the price for the crime committed by the guilty twin, even though the guilty twin is now suffering due to the harm inflicted on his innocent brother? It seems at best this could result in sympathy for the the twins but it could not satisfy the penalty owed by the guilty twin.

Let me offer a third scenario which may even more closely parallel Aquinas' view of the atonement. Lets say that I am the innocent twin and that from early childhood my twin brother has raped me. When I turn 18, I decide to tell my father about it. I tell my father that I love my brother and wish that he would be remorseful and repentant about his evil acts against me. My father comes up with a plan. He suggests that I report the crime to the police and that when the police come to arrest my brother, I will conveniently be at his house and will have sent my brother out on an errand. I do not lie to the police when they come but I know that they will mistake me for my brother. I am put in jail awaiting trial and the inmates beat me to the point that I am paralyzed. When my brother realizes what has happened, he comes to the police department and confesses to his crime and is extremely remorseful and repentant for his evil actions of rape. I, the police and my father are all satisfied that enough suffering has taken place and thus charges are dropped against my brother and we all forgive him. A couple of days later I am miraculously healed from my paralysis.

Now this is a very strange case but it seems to me that it pretty closely models the idea of the atonement that Aquinas had in mind. What type of justice would this be? What would we think of a father who came up with this plan? Is this model really consistent with the way the Bible portrays the Atonement? I don't think it is.

So, while I think that Aquinas' view of the atonement escapes some of the problems of the PST, I think at the end of the day, it still fails to explain how the death of an innocent person can satisfy the penalty owed by the guilty and I am not sure it accurately reflects the teaching of Scripture.

Anselm, Aquinas, and Calvin on Punishment and Satisfaction

I have been reading a recent Master's Thesis on the Atonement written by John P. Joy. Its entitled, "Poena Satisfactoria: Locating Thomas Aquinas's Doctrine of Vicarious Satisfaction in between Anselmian Satisfaction and Penal Substitution" (Austria: International Theological Institute, 2010). I was made aware of the thesis by Nick at Nick's Catholic Blog. He has some excellent posts on the Penal Substitutionary Theory (PST).

Joy argues that Aquinas' view of the atonement is not the PST as some have alleged but neither is it the same as Anselm's Satisfaction theory. It is actually a middle position between those two views. He explains:

Both Aquinas and the Reformers adopt Anselm’s term, namely “satisfaction”, but the respective meanings which they give to the term vary. This divergence of meaning is located in the relation that satisfaction bears to punishment. For Luther and Calvin only punishment can make satisfaction. Justice is satisfied when sin is punished; therefore, “to satisfy” for sin means nothing other than “to be punished” for sin. Aquinas, on the other hand, takes a slightly different position: although satisfaction always contains something of a penal nature, it is never simply the same as punishment. In his scholastic terminology, satisfactio est poena secundum quid. To compound the problem, neither usage seems to agree entirely with Anselm, who tends to define satisfaction precisely in opposition to punishment: justice demands one or the other, but not both. . . . regarding the relationship between punishment and satisfaction, Thomas walks something of a via media between Anselm’s opposition of the two concepts and the Reformation identification of them (pp. 1-2).

For Anselm, satisfaction and punishment are two distinct things. Joy uses the following example to illustrate the distinction: The man who offends his wife may make up for it by bringing her flowers (satisfaction), or she may make him sleep on the couch (punishment) (p. 22). Either way justice is served. In Anselm's view, the life and death of Jesus is an offering to God which makes satisfaction for man's sin. Those who don't repent and believe will suffer punishment themselves for their own sin. For Calvin, satisfaction and punishment are one and the same. When sin is punished, either vicariously in the death of Jesus or personally in hell in the case of unbelievers, satisfaction is made for sin and justice is served. For Aquinas, satisfaction is a type of punishment but there is also another type of punishment that is distinct from satisfaction. In other words, punishment exists in two forms. Poena simpliciter (basic or simple punishment) and poena secundum quid (punishment as satisfaction). The distinction arises from whether the guilty person suffers against his will or voluntarily. If the person suffers the penalty against his will, then it is the former and if the person suffers the penalty voluntarily (and remorsefully), then it is the latter. Joy explains:

When a judge simply punishes an offender, his act of punishing belongs properly to the virtue of vindictive justice, for he renders to the offender what is due to him, namely punishment. If, on the other hand, the offender wills to make amends by voluntarily compensating the offended one for his injury, his act of satisfying belongs to the virtue of penance, which is a species of justice, for he renders to the offended what is due to him, namely compensation. Justice is done in either case, but the agent and patient of the act differ: in simple punishment, the judge renders what is due to the offender, whereas in satisfaction, the offender renders what is due to the offended (p. 43).

In Aquinas' view, satisfaction (poena secundum quid) can be paid by a substitute whereas basic or simple punishment (poena simpliciter) can only be paid by the offending party. Substitution is possible in the former because technically its an offering of something valuable to make amends for the sin committed; whereas in the latter its basic punishment against the unrepentant sinner. In the former, the sinner is repentant, remorseful, and seeks to make amends with the offended party. In man's case, he has nothing of any real value to offer to God, so Jesus steps in and offers up himself (a life lived perfectly even to the point of martyrdom) as the most valuable gift possible. In the latter, the sinner is unrepentant and must be punished against his will. The former is technically punishment in Aquinas' view but not punishment of Jesus (as in the PST) but punishment of the repentant sinner as he sees how much his sin cost--the very death of the Son of God. Aquinas writes: [T]hus punishment is not lacking to him [i.e., the repentant sinner], as long as he suffers with his suffering friend; and so much the more fully as he himself is the cause of his suffering (Summa Contra Gentiles III, cap. 158, n. 7 cited by Joy, p. 50).

In the next post, I want to examine in more detail Aquinas' version of of substitutionary atonement and see if it is able to evade the problems associated with the PST such as the injustice of punishing an innocent in place of the guilty.

Thomas Aquinas on the Punishment of the Innocent

Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) wrote before the Penal Substitutionary Theory had been formulated, yet he anticipated the problem of punishing an innocent in place of the guilty. In his Summa Theologica, First Part Of The Second Part, Question 87, Article 7 and Article 8, he discusses the issue. In article 7, he asks the question: "Whether every punishment is inflicted for a sin?" He answers: It would seem that not every punishment is inflicted for a sin. He cites John 9:2, 3 and where Jesus is asked about the man born blind, whether it was due to the child's sin or the parents' sin. Jesus answered that neither the blind man's nor his parents' sins were responsible.

Aquinas distinguishes two types of punishment: 1) Simple and 2) Satisfactory. He writes:

[P]unishment can be considered in two ways---simply, and as being satisfactory. A satisfactory punishment is, in a way, voluntary. And since those who differ as to the debt of punishment, may be one in will by the union of love, it happens that one who has not sinned, bears willingly the punishment for another: thus even in human affairs we see men take the debts of another upon themselves. If, however, we speak of punishment simply, in respect of its being something penal, it has always a relation to a sin in the one punished.

He sees satisfaction as a type of pecuniary debt which one can pay for another. He sees simple punishment as that which can only be suffered by the one who committed the crime. He sees the atonement of Christ as the former not the latter. Christ bore a satisfactory punishment, not for His, but for our sins.

In article 8 he asks the question: Whether anyone is punished for another's sin?

His answer:

If we speak of that satisfactory punishment, which one takes upon oneself voluntarily, one may bear another's punishment, in so far as they are, in some way, one, as stated above. 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 (emphasis added). But if we speak of a punishment that is medicinal, in this way it does happen that one is punished for another's sin. For it has been stated that ills sustained in bodily goods or even in the body itself, are medicinal punishments intended for the health of the soul. Wherefore there is no reason why one should not have such like punishments inflicted on one for another's sin, either by God or by man; e.g. on children for their parents, or on servants for their masters, inasmuch as they are their property so to speak; in such a way, however, that, if the children or the servants take part in the sin, this penal ill has the character of punishment in regard to both the one punished and the one he is punished for. But if they do not take part in the sin, it has the character of punishment in regard to the one for whom the punishment is borne, while, in regard to the one who is punished, it is merely medicinal (except accidentally, if he consent to the other's sin), since it is intended for the good of his soul, if he bears it patiently.

Aquinas is saying that an innocent may benefit from being punished together with the guilty in a "medicinal way." Somehow the suffering helps the individual to grow spiritually (what some have called "soul-making"). But obviously, this would not apply with regard to Jesus as he was already perfect spiritually and in need of no "medicinal suffering."

This "medicinal suffering" can serve as a deterrent. He writes:

The punishments which human justice inflicts on one for another's sin are bodily and temporal. They are also remedies or medicines against future sins, in order that either they who are punished, or others may be restrained from similar faults.

While Aquinas does not deal specifically with the PST of the atonement, he seems to make it clear that penal suffering can only be inflicted on the guilty. Innocents that have some connection with the guilty parties, as children to parents or slaves to masters, might justly be included in the punishment of the guilty but it is a different type of punishment according to Aquinas.

I think Aquinas was forced to argue for the punishment of the innocent in certain cases because it is found in the OT in the genocides, in the death of the Egyptian firstborn, and so on. In each of these cases, the innocents are connected to the guilty parties in some form. I think this represents what I have called before "collective culpability" which was a part of the ancient mindset. However, for Aquinas punishment, in the sense of penal suffering, could only legitimately be inflicted on the guilty person. If others were also punished along with the guilty, it served some other purpose besides penal suffering.