Faustus Socinus on Penal Substitution--Part Seven

Today, I conclude my series on Faustus Socinus(1539-1604). Socinus was a 16th century Reformer who took a radical approach to the Reformation going much farther than Luther or Calvin. His book, De Jesu Christo Servatore (1578), is probably the most thorough critique of the PST ever written. It was written in response to a discussion that Socinus had with a man named Covetus. The story is recounted by Alex Gordon in  "The Sozzini and their School" (The Theological Review: A Quarterly Journal of Religious Thought and Life, Vol. 16, No. 65 [1879], pp. 547-48).

[T]here came to Basle in 1577, on his way to the Easter fair at Frankfort, a certain Jaques Couet [Covetus], a Parisian student, travelling from Geneva in company with Manfredo Balbani. They put up at the same lodging where Sozzini [Socinus] resided, and a considerable party sat down to supper. Before the meal, it had been arranged that Couet was to draw Sozzini on the subject of the satisfaction of Christ. Couet, then a rising light of divinity, fresh from the schools, was by no means averse to the plan. He expected an easy victory; and thought Sozzini would be all the more ready to engage with an adversary whose dress betrayed no sign of the ministerial character, as he travelled in the ordinary garb of a business man. He miscalculated alike the shrewdness and the theological eagerness of his opponent. Scarcely had they sat down to table, when the practised ear of Sozzini detected the Calvinist preacher beneath the lay doublet. Couet's long grace before meat was much too professional to be a commercial traveller's spontaneous effort. And the detection greatly increased instead of diminishing Sozzini's willingness for an encounter. He accepted Couet's conversational remarks as a challenge, and the discussion at once began. It was impossible to conclude it that night, and Couet had to start at early dawn on his Frankfort journey. He begged Sozzini to put upon paper the heads of the matters in dispute, and let him have them before he left. No sooner said than done. Sozzini sat down in his bedroom to draft the document. Finishing it in haste, he carried it to the chamber of Couet, who had already retired to rest. Then and there the exact terms of discussion were agreed upon between the two men. A few weeks later, Couet forwarded to Basle, by the hands of Juan Francisco, his examination of the theses, briefly but ably handled. The communication is dated 1 April, 1577. Sozzini felt that the matter demanded of him a full and careful treatment, and accordingly set himself to compose an exhaustive reply. The progress of the work was interrupted by the outbreak of the plague at Basle, and by another controversy of which we shall speak presently. At length on 12 July, 1578, the labour was finished, and in the shape of a bulky treatise was intrusted to Juan Francisco, who promised to send it to Couet's brother at Geneva.

In chapters 7-10 of his classic work, Socinus answers the following assertion from Covetus:

For if Christ, as you claim, did not die to make satisfaction for us to God, then he certainly should not have died at all, and in fact could not have died. God would have been unjust to have handed him over to die. The wages of sin is death (Rom. 6). And death entered the world through sin, such that God exercises his authority against human beings. But he does not exercise judgment against human beings per se, simply because they are human, but because they are sinners. You, however, deny that Christ died for our sins. Therefore, it follows that Christ—who really did die—must have died for his own sins. No one dies unless it is because of sin: either for his own sins or for the sins of someone else. But to say that Christ died for his own sins is a great blasphemy (p. 102).

Socinus rejects the assertion that no one dies unless it is because of sin: either for his own sins or for the sins of someone else. He says that the "wages of sin" referred to by Paul in Romans 6:23 is eternal death not physical death. He writes:

Natural death, in so far as it is natural and common to all, is not the wage of sin. It is the proper result of our nature, which Adam himself received in his very creation. But the wage of sin is the necessity of dying and eternal death. . . . mortality is natural to human beings even before sin and quite apart from it, in as much as it is natural to living organisms, formed from the earth right from the start.

I think Socinus is correct because if natural death were the wages of sin and if Christ paid that penalty on the cross, then believers would not die a physical death, but of course they do.

Thus, according to Socinus, Christ himself was also subject to this natural death. He was not subject because of any sin—either his own or those of another—but because he was born human.

Whatever the death of Jesus was, it was not a punishment, according to Socinus. He writes:

God would have wronged Christ if he allowed such great evils to come upon Christ as a punishment, regardless of how willing Christ might have been. Christ certainly could not have been subjected to any punishment, in as much as he was completely innocent.

Socinus anticipates the following response from Covetus: You will respond that God could indeed be quite just in choosing to impute the sins of others to Christ. But on the other hand, you will say that he in no way deserved to have these sins imputed to him.

Socinus argues that the above two statements are contradictory. How could God be just in imputing the sins of man to Christ when Christ did not deserve to have these sins imputed?

So, we are back to the whole problem of how one justly punishes an innocent person. Socinus explains:

Your axiom actually assumes that it can be just for the sins of others to be imputed to someone, even though that person is completely innocent. I fail to see how anyone could say or think of a more ridiculous or wicked notion. This is especially the case if your axiom is applied to Christ, with reference to whom you stated it in the first place.

Earlier, when we noted that no one could suffer bodily penalties for another person, we also showed that the sins of others could not be imputed by God to anyone. Indeed, the sins of the father could not be imputed to the son, unless the son were to imitate the wickedness of the father. As I noted, Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5, which state that God punishes the sins of the parents in the sons, can be harmonized with Ezekiel 18, which states that the son will not bear the iniquity of the father. Ezekiel 18:14 ff. clearly suggests how to harmonize these seemingly contradictory statements.

Two conditions must necessarily be met at the same time before the sins of others may be imputed to someone. One condition is that the one who is to receive the imputation of the sins must be connected to the person whose sins are to be imputed in such a way that the one to receive the imputation should appear to be a partaker of the other's transgressions solely on account of that connection. The other condition is that the person who receives the imputation must also have sinned, and have imitated the wickedness of that other person. Otherwise, as reason itself obviously teaches, we should regard the imputation as completely wicked.

Faustus Socinus on Penal Substitution--Part Six

Today, I continue my series on Faustus Socinus'(1539-1604) critique of the Penal Substitutionary Theory (PST) of the Atonement. Socinus was a 16th century Reformer who took a radical approach to the Reformation. He agreed with the other Reformers that the Scripture alone (sola Scriptura) was the only basis for religious authority. However, he differed from the Calvinists and Lutherans in that he rejected anything in Scripture which was contrary to reason. He believed that the Bible rightly understood would not contradict human reason. This has caused some to argue that Socinus was simply a "rationalist," in other words he made reason his supreme authority. This is not entirely accurate. As Alan Gomes says:

Socinus held that there are truths in Scripture that are above reason. For example, miracles are above reason, and are credible. But the Bible contains nothing that is contrary to reason. Harnack further observes that Socinus held—in contradistinction to the Nominalists—that Christianity is not contra rationem but supra rationem. As noted earlier, Socinus will give no quarter to the notion that the Bible contains either doctrinal contradictions or doctrinal errors that are false per se ("Some Observations On The Theological Method of Faustus Socinus," Westminster Theological Journal 70 [2008]: 58).

I came to the same conclusion as Socinus (although not via his writings)that if the Bible is really the Word of God it cannot contradict reason. Assuming that God created man with reason and expected him to use it, and if reason is part of natural revelation, then natural revelation cannot contradict special revelation (i.e., the Bible). As I have pointed out in many posts, the idea that the death of an innocent person could justly be substituted for the sins of guilty people makes no sense. It is contrary to human reason and to any human sense of moral justice. This was the final straw that led to my de-conversion from Evangelical Christianity.

Socinus wrote the most definitive refutation of the PST--De Jesu Christo Servatore. Unfortunately, this work as well as most of Socinus' other works have not been translated into English (I will not say this is due to a conspiracy but the "orthodox" have historically been known to suppress books that are written by those they consider to be heretical). Recently, Alan Gomes translation of Part III of DJCS has become available to me and I hope this will eventually be published (It can be read on-line here). I have five prior posts on this document and will continue with a discussion of chapter six today.

Socinus argues in chapter six that Jesus Christ could not literally merit salvation for mankind through his life or his death. God could choose to accept what Jesus did as adequate but it would not be due to the intrinsic worth of Jesus' life and death but simply by the sovereign grace of God. Socinus maintains that this is really what the Reformed are saying: they believe that Christ made satisfaction because God decreed it to be satisfaction. God accepted Christ's obedience in place of satisfaction, but not because this obedience has the power to make satisfaction per se. (p. 96). He says John Calvin admitted as much when he said:

Christ could not gain any merit apart from God's good pleasure. He had been appointed to this work, so that he might placate God's wrath by his sacrifice and wipe away our transgressions by his obedience. In summary, since the merit of Christ depends on the sole grace of God, which established this way of salvation for us, his merit is opposed no less suitably than grace to all human forms of righteousness (p. 96).

Socinus says that Calvin's statement makes it clear that Calvin not only thought that Christ was obedient because God willed it, but also that he could not gain any merit by his obedience unless God had decreed that he should gain merit (pp. 96-97).

Socinus claims that as a result, Calvin and PST defenders are caught in a contradiction. He writes:

For this proposition opposes itself and self-destructs: “Christ literally and properly merited salvation for us, not per se but through the grace of God.” If literal and proper merit had occurred, then God's grace is thereby excluded. But if Christ did not gain merit per se but through the grace of God, then he did not at the same time gain literal and proper merit (p. 97).

This is one of the reasons why he rejects the PST because it is self-contradictory. In a future post, I will discuss chapter 7 in Socinus' work, De Jesu Christo Servatore.

Faustus Socinus on Penal Substitution--Part Five

Faustus Socinus (1539-1604), an Italian theologian, is one of the most important figures of the 16th century Reformation. He took the rejection of Roman Catholic doctrines much further than Martin Luther, John Calvin or any of the other Reformers. He rejected the deity of Christ, the Trinity, and the Satisfaction theories of the atonement. While he is sometimes called a "rationalist" by his opponents, he did not reject the divine origin of the Bible but merely believed that its teachings could not contradict sound reason (See Alan W. Gomes, "Some Observations On The Theological Method Of Faustus Socinus," Westminster Theological Journal, 70 [2008]: 49-71).

Socinus wrote De Jesu Christo Servatore (The Savior Jesus Christ) in 1574 and it was published in 1598. In this work he laid out a number of arguments against the Satisfaction Theories of the Atonement including the Penal Substitutionary Theory (PST) of the Atonement. His treatment of the subject is so thorough that some have said that every argument against the PST has its origin in the writings of Socinus. Unfortunately, his writings have not been readily available in English translation. So much of his teaching for the English reader has to be gleaned from secondary sources, usually written by those who opposed his views. Recently, Alan W. Gomes, did an English translation of De Jesu Christo Servatore as a Ph.D dissertation and he graciously sent me a copy (Faustus Socinus’ De Jesu Christo Servatore, Part III: Historical Introduction, Translation and Critical Notes. Pasadena: Fuller Theological Seminary, June 1990). My quotations from Socinus will be from Gomes' translation.

In chapter five of Socinus' classic work, he argues against the Calvinist view that Jesus kept the law in the elect's place. Calvin's argument is that not only was Jesus' death vicarious but his life was as well. In other words, he kept the law perfectly in place of the elect (active obedience) and then he died for the sins of the elect (passive obedience). Just as he died in the place of the elect, he lived righteously in their place as well. It is this righteous life of obedience that is imputed or credited to the elect as their own righteousness.

Socinus, on the other hand, maintains that since Jesus was human, he was obliged as much as any other man to keep the Law and thus his obedience brought reward to him only and not to others.

He writes:

Christ, because he was a human being, made under the law (as Paul says), was obliged to obey the eternal and unchangeable divine law no less than other human beings. . . . And since he himself was obliged to keep the divine law, he was no more able than any other human being to make satisfaction for others by obeying it (p. 86).

But how does this relate to others? His voluntary submission certainly received its adequate (and more than adequate) recompense: he was exalted by God, being given the name above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee of heaven, earth and hell should bow. Paul makes it exceedingly clear (Phil. 2:6 ff.) that God gave him this reward not only for his voluntary submission (which is how you interpret the Apostle's words) but also for obedience to the point of death on the cross. One cannot reasonably infer from this passage of Paul that Christ did not indeed merit a reward for himself (pp. 86-87).

If you argue that he gained merit for us as God and in the power of the divine nature, that would be ridiculous. As we said, God, or the divine nature, does not merit but bestows, paying deserved rewards for any so-called merits (p. 90).

Socinus holds that Jesus as a human being kept the law perfectly and God rewarded him by exalting him. His obedience could not be substituted in the place of another anymore than his death could be substituted in another's place. Jesus did not do more than God required thereby earning an abundance of merit that could then be applied to someone else. He writes:

Christ did nothing that God had not commanded him to do. If we are talking about observing the divine law, everything Christ did was enjoined on him by that very law. Because he was a human being, he was obliged to keep the law no less than other human beings. If we should consider the unique deeds he performed, while yet mortal, over and beyond what the law requires of everyone, even these unique deeds had been enjoined on him by God. We greatly praise his obedience by saying that he was obedient even to the point of death on the cross. But obedience is not possible where there is no commandment (p. 89).

I will discuss chapter six in Socinus' work in a future post.

Faustus Socinus on Penal Substitution--Part Four

Today, I continue my series on Faustus Socinus' (1539-1604) objections to the Penal Substitutionary Theory (PST) of the atonement. Socinus was a radical Reformer of the 16th century and the father of the Unitarian movement. He wrote De Jesu Christo Servatore (The Savior Jesus Christ) in 1574 in reply to advocates of the PST (I am using the translation by Alan W. Gomes, "Faustus Socinus’ De Jesu Christo Servatore, Part III: Historical Introduction, Translation and Critical Notes." Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Fuller Theological Seminary, June 1990).

I am continuing with the arguments presented by Socinus in chapter four of his classic work.

12. Even if Jesus had a divine nature [which Socinus denies], his sufferings, which were only in his human nature, would be of no more value than any other human being.

Many biblical expositors say that Christ was composed of a divine and human nature, just as a human being is composed of body and soul. And just as in the case of a human being we acknowledge that some operations are of the body and others of the soul, even so these commentators acknowledge some operations in Christ to be of the human nature and others of the divine nature. Although the same individual, consisting of body and soul, is the one who performs an action, nevertheless the power behind the actions of the body is one thing, and the power of the soul's actions is another. Many actions or operations of the body, because they are completely peculiar to the body, cannot be influenced at all by the soul or mind. Nor can such operations of the body be regarded as furnished with any greater power than if that same action could take place apart from a thinking soul and mind [e.g., in an animal] . . . .

In the case of Christ's passion the conclusion is all the more forceful, since while both the body and the soul can suffer, the divine nature cannot suffer at all; only the human nature can suffer. If a blow, inflicted on the body of a human being, has no greater power per se than if that same blow had been inflicted on some beast, it is much more true that whatever Christ suffered could have in itself no greater power than if some mere man had experienced the identical suffering . . . .

The divine nature cannot be injured, troubled ordisturbed by the afflictions of the human nature, nor can it be genuinely involved in such disturbances in any way.

You yourself admit that Christ's divine nature suffered only through the “communication of attributes.” Apparently your doctrine of satis-faction has not blinded you to such an extent that you cannot clearly see that the divine nature cannot literally suffer. Therefore, that infinite power which you claim is supplied by the divine nature does not literally belong to Christ's sufferings through the communication of attributes, either (pp. 72-73).

13. Even if the divine nature could suffer, it would not mean that the sufferings are of infinite value.

The question here is whether Christ's sufferings are of infinite worth. If we consider all of God's works one by one, we will find that none of them are of infinite worth, however valuable they may be. Even the angels are not of infinite worth, since they have certain ordained ends and limits, from which they derive their value, as it were. It is only in God himself, and in whatever naturally and continually inheres in him (if one can speak in this way about God) that you will find infinite value. Therefore, even if we wish to understand the term “passion” in this context to refer to the very feeling of suffering, we still could not conclude that the divine passions are of infinite value. That is because such sufferings do not inhere in God either continually or naturally (pp. 75-76).

14. Even if the sufferings of Jesus, because of his divinity, were deemed to be of infinite value, they would only pay the penalty owed by one man not all of humanity.

Perhaps we might say that the infinity of time which could not rightly be demanded of us (since our transgressions were only temporary) takes the place of the infinite price which each of us owed but were unable to pay. Assuming that we may be freed from our guilt through payment made by someone else on our behalf, why was not each one of us bound to pay an infinity of price in place of an infinity of time through someone else, to the degree that we could not do so on our own?

In that case, then, the infinite value which is allegedly found in Christ's sufferings, because the divine nature suffered, could have paid for one person at most. And so, only one of us could have been freed from our liability to eternal death by his power. This conclusion is true if, as it was said, any of us were liable, on our own, to pay an infinite price. Consequently, it would be necessary for there to be just as many prices of infinite value paid as there are people for whom a payment is to be made. Just one infinite price would not be enough if all of us are to be freed from our liability through a transaction based on a payment made through another for what we ourselves were owing.

Now, you might assume, quite contrary to reason, that we should regard the infinite value which accrues to the sufferings of Christ through the divine nature as sufficient to cover all of the infinities of punishment which each of us ought to have paid. But then you must also assume that any suffering of Christ could bring about this same effect. Some of the so-called Scholastic doctors have contrived just such a doctrine. They say that one drop of Christ's blood would be sufficient—and more than sufficient—to redeem the human race. But if that is true, I fail to see, as I remarked recently, how God could escape the charge of either ignorance or savageness. After all: when he could have given salvation by subjecting Christ to only minimal suffering, he chose instead to inflict a horrible and accursed death on him, which came after serious and innumerable evils (pp. 76-77).

15. Even if the divine nature could suffer (which it can't), it would not avail to satisfy the penalty for sin because that penalty is owed by humanity (not divinity) and must be paid by the human nature.

Even if the divine nature in Christ could suffer somehow, it could not contribute toward satisfaction. Satisfaction to divine justice had to be made by the human nature alone, not by the divine nature in any way.

This fact would seem to rule out the power which you allege that the divine nature (which itself experienced no suffering) bestowed on the sufferings of the human nature. For if that infinite power does not arise from the human nature but is bestowed on the sufferings by his divine nature, I fail to see how satisfaction could have been made to divine justice. Divine justice not only requires that human nature itself should make satisfaction, but divine justice also utterly demands that the power of satisfaction should come from human nature.

An analogy will clarify this. Suppose the law requires someone to carry a burden on his own shoulders as punishment for some infraction of the law. If the person indeed has the burden placed on his shoulders but at the same time receives help from another person who comes along and lends assistance, either by bearing some of the weight or by offering support in any way, then satisfaction is not made to the law. Likewise, if the human nature indeed suffered but was at the same time continually sustained by the divine nature so that it could bear the punishment, then satisfaction was not made to the divine law, which determined the penalties to be endured by the human nature. Nor will satisfaction have genuinely been made to the law if the one who should bear the burden is helped extraordinarily by consuming some food or drink that produces superhuman strength, or by any other source introduced from without.

The law that decreed the punishment careful-ly takes into account the typical strength of a human being, and metes out punishment to harm the offender as the seriousness of the crime warrants. If the offender's strength ismiraculously increased, then the offender does not yet feel the affliction that the law intends. Consequently, a fair judge would never allow a guilty person to be strength-ened and supported in this way. But suppose that the transgressor is furnished with ex-traordinary strength that far and away ex-ceeds the strength people typically possess, so that the burden which is heavy for everyone else is not particularly heavy for this individual. Since the force of the burden cannot—or rather, should not—be diminished, the fair judge, complying with the spirit of the law rather than its letter, will increase the burden. The judge will do this because the intent of the law is that the transgressor should experience the weight of the burden that the transgression demands.

...If this human nature is strengthened from a source outside itself, so that it experienced the punishment much less—or even somewhat less—than the law required, the human nature will not have made satisfaction to the law in any way (pp. 79-81).

16. Since the PST holds that Jesus suffered the penalty due to man for his sin, and since the human nature of Jesus did not experience eternal death, then the penalty for man's sin was not paid.

But your view demands that Christ experienced less punishment than our sins required. The penalty decreed against the transgressions of human nature was eternal death. Even though this human nature ought to have been afflicted with this extremely serious penalty, Christ nevertheless did not experience this in any way—notwithstanding your assertion that he endured all the penalties for our transgressions.

On account of the help of the divine nature,coming from without, the human nature not only failed to experience eternal death but was even raised after paying a penalty for three days. It was raised to eternal life and granted the highest and unspeakable glory and power (pp. 81-82).

17. Even if somehow the death of Jesus did satisfy the penalty owed to the Father, who paid the penalty owed to the Son, since he is also God in this theory and would need to be propitiated as much as the Father would?

Now, if the son made satisfaction to the Father—that is, if he paid what was owed to him—then who will give the son what was owed to him?

I suspect that you will reply as follows: satisfaction made to the Father is also made to the son, since they both have the same will. But such a response is obviously futile. In the case of literal and complete satisfaction, such as we are contemplating here, no consideration is given to the will, but to the matter itself. The punishment is determined and considered according to the rigor of the law, not according to the intent of the one who is to receive satisfaction.

Besides, when the matter itself is considered and the rigor of the law taken seriously, it does not necessarily follow that the son receives satisfaction along with the Father. The son could have paid nothing at all to the Father if whatever is or becomes the possession of one necessarily is in fact the possession of the other. The son always truly possessed whatever the Father receives. And whatever the son has is always in turn the continual property of the Father. Indeed, if what I am sure you yourselves regard as completely false were in fact true, then the son could not have genuinely paid anything to the Father. No payment can truly exist when the one who makes the payment gives the very payment which one necessarily receives immediately by actual right and from the nature of the case (p. 83).

18. If the Son is God, equal to the Father, then the Son cannot pay anything to the Father, since the Father already has what the Son has.

No one could dispute, then, that the son could not give anything to the Father, since whatever the son has also truly belongs to the Father. Christ himself said that all things that were his are the Father's (Jn. 17:10). If you would have it that one person in the Godhead has something, besides the personal property that the other does not have, then you aredividing rather than distinguishing God's essence, contrary to your own teaching. Besides, no one would ever think that the person of the son handed over in payment his own personal property to the person of the Father in satisfaction for our sins (pp. 83-84).

19. If the Son shares the divine essence with the Father, and the Son made satisfaction for the sins of mankind to God, then he made satisfaction to himself which is non-sensical.

It assumes that he, to whom satisfaction ought to have been made, will have made satisfaction to himself. Or, it assumes that he gave himself the power to make satisfaction. Or, it assumes that the person making satis-faction was so joined to the person who ought to receive satisfaction that he was possessing absolutely all things in common with him, from which the power of making satisfaction to him could arise.

It is necessary for the person making satisfaction, or the person who helps accomplish satisfaction, to be absolutely distinct from the one who is to receive satisfaction. At the very least, the one making satisfaction should be separate enough to have some possession of his own from which satisfaction can receive or effect power. Common sense itself clearly teaches this, so that if you insist on saying that Christ paid all the penalties for our sins to God on our behalf, you are forced to choose between one of the following conclusions: (1) you must deny that Christ himself is eternal God and Jehovah, or (2) you must affirm that the extent to which he was eternal God and Jehovah could not coincide with making that payment (p. 85).

In a future post, I will examine the arguments against the PST put forth by Socinus in chapter five of his book.

Faustus Socinus on Penal Substitution--Part Three

Today, I continue my series on Faustus Socinus' (1539-1604) objections to the Penal Substitutionary Theory (PST) of the atonement. Socinus was a radical Reformer of the 16th century and the father of the Unitarian movement. He wrote De Jesu Christo Servatore (The Savior Jesus Christ) in 1574 in reply to advocates of the PST (I am using the translation by Alan W. Gomes, "Faustus Socinus’ De Jesu Christo Servatore, Part III: Historical Introduction, Translation and Critical Notes." Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Fuller Theological Seminary, June 1990).

In chapters 3 and 4 of Socinus' work, he argues that it is unjust to punish an innocent person in place of the guilty.

1. A monetary penalty is not the same as a corporal penalty.

Admittedly, monetary penalties due for the fault of one person can be assumed legally by another person. This is because one person's money is just as effective as another's. When a person transfers the monetary penalty of another to himself, it is regarded as if that person had given that money, quite justly, to the transgressor. That person certainly would have had every right to give the money to the transgressor, and the end result would have been exactly the same. But death or any other corporal punishment of one person cannot be undertaken legally by another. Neither law nor custom has ever permitted one, whom-ever he might be, to endure corporal punishment for someone else (p. 47).

2. Sometimes vengeance is exercised against the innocent but this is savage and unjust.

Blinded by anger and lust for revenge, people occasionally brutalize the innocent also. This happens especially when, for whatever reason, they cannot take revenge on the one who harmed them (e.g., the person may have eluded them). But it never has happened, nor ever will, that someone sends away the culprit and takes out revenge on some innocent person instead. If human beings, however uncivilized and savage, do not willingly release the guilty only to punish the innocent in their place, then it is quite obvious that such action is not only completely opposed to any standard of justice: it is worse than inhuman and savage (p. 47).

3. Jesus cannot be said to share in the sin of mankind as a result of becoming man anymore than any human being can be held responsible for the actions of another human being simply because they are both men.

Nor was this innocent man [Jesus] associated with the guilty in such a way that the guilty can be said to have undergone those penalties. For what connection is there between Christ and other human beings that does not also exist between any two people in physical terms and in so far as they are all human beings? Therefore, just as others can by no means be said to suffer what one person suffers in his own body, neither can we be regarded as having borne those evils which Christ bore in his body (pp. 49-50).

4. Human reason and the universal practice of man shows that it is unjust to punish an innocent person.

The light of reason, with which God has presented us, clearly shows that the bodily punishment which one person owes neither can nor should be paid by another person. This is shown in the laws, the consistent customs, and the significant consensus of all nations and periods of history (p. 50).

5. The Bible itself says that God will not punish the innocent for the crimes of the guilty.

The best known passage on this subject is Ezekiel 18. Here he states plainly and in detail that he is unwilling to punish the iniquities of the sons in the fathers, nor will he punish the iniquities of the fathers in the sons if the sons have not been wicked as their fathers were wicked. He concludes: “The soul which sins will die. The son will not bear the iniquity of the father; neither will the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous will be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked will be upon him.” This same principle appears also in the Mosaic law (Deut. 24:16) as well as in 2 Kgs. 14: 50.

The son is the person most closely connected with his father. In fact, he is so closely related that he can not only be called a part of him, but can even be called the father's “alter ego.” And yet, according to God's view, the son ought not to pay the penalties for the crimes of his father nor, in turn, the father for the son. We should be ashamed to say that this same God, in opposition to all fairness, forgot himself, as it were, and demanded the complete penalty for iniquities from one human being out of all other human beings, with whom this one person has no other connection except that this person, like them, is a human being. Nothing more foolish or wicked—not to mention impious and abominable, since we are talking about God—could be contrived (pp. 50-51)!

6. It is the height of injustice to allow the guilty to go unpunished and to punish instead the one innocent of the crimes.

If God wished to exercise mercy toward the human race and to commend his goodness and generosity to us, why would he not forgive people their wicked deeds without any cost, as indeed he was able to do? But if he really wanted bring glory to his name by demonstrating his vengeance and harshness in avenging wrongs and punishing transgressions (which, as I pointed out, is not justice in the proper sense of the term), why did he not avenge and punish the very ones who had transgressed, who did their best to diminish his majesty? For what kind of vengeance or punishment of sin is it, to send away those who sinned without punishment, while at the same time subjecting one who committed no wrong to the most severe punishments (p. 51)?

It is the height of injustice (and in fact iniquity and viciousness) to establish a justice in God which indeed exacts punishment for transgressions but from someone other than the guilty party. For God to have punished someone who was not guilty with the punishment we deserved does not merely fail to show or commend to us his perfect mercy or his punitive justice: it utterly destroys both. In addition, it robs God himself of all genuine justice, i.e., of fairness and uprightness (p. 53).

7. Penal substitution contradicts both mercy and justice.

You might argue that God wanted to exercise each of his attributes, viz. mercy and justice, at the same time and to commend them both to us. On the one hand, he appears merciful in that he does not exact the punishment for our transgressions from us. On the other hand, he is shown to be just, because he nevertheless punishes our sins.

If you wish to affirm, as your teachers are accustomed to do, that God has perfectly exercised that punitive “justice” and mercy toward us in this fashion, I say that this is not only patently false but even impossible, as I demonstrated toward the beginning of this response. This is because perfect mercy demands that the one who is guilty should be forgiven completely. But perfect punitive justice demands that the very same person who transgressed should be punished with the due penalty. It is impossible and contradictory for someone to be completely forgiven and at the same time punished with the de-served penalty (pp. 51-52).

8. The death of Jesus in history could not pay the penalty of eternal death.

We must admit that since eternal death was owed for our sins, and since Christ hardly experienced that, nor could he have done so, whatever he did suffer or could have suffered did not entail paying the penalties we deserved for our sins. Consequently, we must also admit that he could not have paid to divine justice the penalties for our transgressions (p. 67).

Since you say that Christ took upon himself all our transgressions just as if he himself had committed them all, I do not see how he could satisfy divine justice without bearing all the penalties that the divine law demanded that we suffer. . . .

So as not to belabor the point, let us admit that the valuation of the penalty increases with the dignity of the person. Is the value so increased that, no matter what percentage of the penalty the worthy person gives, it is completely equivalent, regardless of how serious the punishment would have been if endured by a less worthy or even a worthless person? If an eminent person is punished with banishment or imprisonment for a mere hour or day, is that the same as if an ordinary person had been punished with unending banishment or imprisonment? What if that eminent man were subjected to this brief punishment in order to be raised afterwards to the highest glory, infinitely greater than he had before? The so-called punishments that Christ endured for our sakes, however serious in themselves, are nonetheless relatively much less serious in comparison with what we deserved to endure than the banishment of a day or an hour is in comparison to continual banishment (p. 69).

9. To say that Jesus suffered spiritual separation (death) from God is blasphemy.

But the punishments that Christ endured not only differ in terms of duration from what God could have justly inflicted on us, but they are also qualitatively different. Even though there are those who dare to affirm that Christ suffered the penalties of the damned, that view should be rejected. Besides the many usual arguments employed against such an idea, we should reject it especially because Christ did not at all experience the despairing of divine grace and help, which is the proper penalty of the damned. Christ indeed complained loudly that he had been abandoned by God, but this was not because he even slightly despaired of God's power to help or of his kindness. To even think such a thought is the height of blasphemy! No, Christ spoke in this way to influence God to come to his aid, that is, to grant him freedom from his torments and from death (p. 70).

10. If Jesus was divine, then he need not have suffered as much as he did.

You might counter this argument by again drawing upon the dissimilarity between Christ and us, saying that Christ, being eternal God, is completely different than us mere humans. And for that reason you would contend that however light the punishments of Christ, they are reckoned as equivalent to our punishments, however heavy. I say in response that if your contention were true, Christ need not have suffered such bitter tortures and such a horrible death. Even though God could have made full satisfaction to his justice by exacting some extremely light penalty from Christ, he wished to cruelly torment him instead. You have, in effect, accused God of injustice and savagery (p. 71).

11. If Jesus were divine, then he could not have suffered at all.

The only basis on which to ascribe infinite power to Christ's sufferings would be that he is eternal God. But Christ, in so far as he was eternal God, could not experience any suffering. Therefore, the fact that Christ is eternal God cannot bestow his infinite power to the sufferings. To give infinite power to the suf-ferings it is not enough simply for Christ to be eternal God: he must also suffer in so far as he is eternal God (p. 72).

I will continue in chapter 4 of De Jesu Christo Servatore in a future post.

Faustus Socinus on Penal Substitution--Part Two

Today, I continue my series on Faustus Socinus' (1539-1604) objections to the Penal Substitutionary Theory (PST) of the atonement. Socinus was a radical Reformer of the 16th century and the father of the Unitarian movement. He wrote De Jesu Christo Servatore (The Savior Jesus Christ) in 1574 in reply to advocates of the PST (I am using the translation by Alan W. Gomes, "Faustus Socinus’ De Jesu Christo Servatore, Part III: Historical Introduction, Translation and Critical Notes." Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Fuller Theological Seminary, June 1990).

In Chapter 2, Socinus gives Biblical support to his contention that God was in fact willing to forgive us our sins, without having first received literal satisfaction for them (p. 13). He cites numerous examples from both testaments in which God forgave sin based on man's repentance without any type of blood sacrifice involved. He begins with the case of Abel:

But on what basis shall we say that God forgave Abel's sins? Was it because Jesus Christ would someday make satisfaction to divine justice for them, and that Abel put his faith in this future event? Not at all. The writer to the Hebrews explains the faith which made God consider Abel just, and which also made Enoch pleasing to God. He describes that faith as comprising the elements we have already stated: a belief that God exists, and that he rewards those who follow him diligently (p. 15).

He mentions many other OT examples and then goes to the NT. He writes:

Later, John the Baptist splendidly explained how we were to actually attain the remission of sins, provided for us solely from God's mercy. He explained this when, to encourage them to repent, he told the people that the kingdom of heaven was drawing near (Matt. 3:2) and preached the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins (Mk. 1:4; Lk. 3:3). Therefore, God himself seeks nothing over and beyond our repentance, through which we obtain the remission of sins offered to us in the new covenant (p. 28)

Socinus concludes that a God that would require an innocent person to suffer a penalty before he would forgive the guilty party is not a gracious or merciful God but a vengeful and heinous deity. He writes:

Consider the following analogy. It is just as if a certain king had many subjects who were deeply indebted to him. If the king were to demand his money from these subjects he would ruin them. So the king devises a plan both to save his subjects and to recoup the money they owe him. The king forces a certain rich man in his kingdom, who owes him nothing, to pay him all the money his subjects owe him. The rich man must come up with the money or be liable for the debt. Everyone would certainly agree that a king who could have freely forgiven the money owed him by his subjects but instead extorts it from someone who owes him nothing is miserly and covetous. He would be all the more stingy and covetous if he were so wealthy that he did not even need the money. And meanwhile, he boasts to the debtors that he has forgiven their entire debt!

The degree of heinousness in God's punishing a substitute for our sins is in direct proportion to the degree to which God holds him dear. Nothing is more disgraceful than needlessly harming with a hideous punishment someone who is precious to you. And nothing is more disgraceful than demanding from that innocent person, as though it were a rightful claim, the penalties for other peoples' transgressions, which God could have justly forgiven outright (pp. 26-27).

While it is true that in Socinus' analogy the rich man is forced to pay the King a debt he did not owe, the fact that the Bible portrays Jesus as doing this willingly does not really affect the force of the analogy. It would still remain true that someone had paid the debt off, even voluntarily, to a King who would not forgive the debt but demanded to paid. The rich man in this scenario would be noble for doing so voluntarily but the King would be ignoble for accepting it and then wanting praise for "forgiving" the debt.

As Socinus says:

Nothing is remitted to the debtor because of satisfaction that someone makes in his place. There is no need for remission—indeed, remission is an impossibility—where the debt no longer exists. There is certainly no longer any debt where satisfaction already was made fully for it (p. 32).

Nor does it help matters to say that the one who is forgiven is not the same as the one from whom the debt is demanded. The payment of a debt can only be demanded from the one who owes it. Although one person certainly can make satisfaction for another, it is still the original debtor who is responsible for the debt and not the person who is paying it in the debtor's place (p. 33).

It will do you no good to add the qualification that the debt is not simply remitted but is only remitted to the person who previously owed it. In this case the debt is not remitted to the person but is simply transferred to someone else. If the debtor had the debt remitted so that he was freed from the obligation to pay it, the debt neither should be nor could be transferred to someone else.

Remission necessarily has two aspects. One is that the person who owes the debt is forgiven of the obligation. The other aspect is that the creditor willingly forgoes satisfaction of the debt. There is no remission without each of these two aspects (pp. 33-34).

But what if it is the creditor who actually pays the debt himself? Since Jesus is believed to be God by the adherents of the PST and his death is a propitiation to God, then isn't he in effect making the payment to himself?

Socinus answers:

I have sometimes heard people say that God's greatest generosity is evident in the payment Christ made for us, since God himself provided the payment he wished to receive. According to this argument, one can say that the creditor exercises the greatest generosity if he provides enough money to pay off the debt. He may provide it either to the debtor or to someone else who should make satisfaction for him. On this reckoning, we should declare God to be especially generous, since God provided Christ with the very payment which Christ gave to God on our behalf. . . .

But those who advance the above argument fail to observe its many problems. First of all, they fail to note, as we said above, that the sort of generosity for which they argue could only be employed if no other way of accomplishing the same effect were possible. No one would publicly give the money to the debtor or to anyone else, only to have the very same money returned to him for the satisfaction of the debt, unless there was some necessity for a payment to intervene before forgiving the debt. Otherwise, why would the creditor take such a useless, roundabout way when the creditor could both have absolved the debtor and have shown generosity by a simple remission of the debt? But, as we have already demonstrated, it was absolutely unnecessary for God to be paid what we owed him.

Next, they fail to consider that their creditor is generous because he provided the money by which the debt is discharged, not because this creditor remitted the debt itself. It is quite incorrect to say that the debt has been remitted to the debtor in such a situation, even though it is certainly accurate to say that the person who gave the debtor his own money to pay off the debt was exceedingly gracious toward that debtor. We have already noted that remission of a debt, to be true remission, thoroughly excludes all payment. If this were not so, we would have to praise the creditor for having exercised double generosity. First, we would have to commend him for providing the money. Then we would have to commend the creditor for remitting the debt. But this is plainly false, since the creditor has in reality only employed a single act of generosity in giving his own money to pay the debt (pp. 39-40).

So, in this chapter (2), Socinus clearly demonstrates that forgiveness or remission of sins is not compatible with the notion of Jesus paying the penalty for sins. If Jesus paid the penalty, then there is nothing to forgive. Since the Bible makes it clear that God does forgive, and in many places he forgives without any penalty being paid, then Socinus concludes that whatever Jesus' death accomplished it was not a payment of a penalty for sin as taught in the PST.

Faustus Socinus on Penal Substitution

Faustus Socinus (1539-1604), an Italian theologian, is one of the most important figures of the 16th century Reformation. He took the rejection of Roman Catholic doctrines much further than Martin Luther, John Calvin or any of the other Reformers. He rejected the deity of Christ, the Trinity, and the Satisfaction theories of the atonement. While he is sometimes called a "rationalist" by his opponents, he did not reject the divine origin of the Bible but merely believed that its teachings could not contradict sound reason (See Alan W. Gomes, "Some Observations On The Theological Method Of Faustus Socinus," Westminster Theological Journal, 70 [2008]: 49-71).

Socinus wrote De Jesu Christo Servatore (The Savior Jesus Christ) in 1574 and it was published in 1598. In this work he laid out a number of arguments against the Satisfaction Theories of the Atonement including the Penal Substitutionary Theory (PST) of the Atonement. His treatment of the subject is so thorough that some have said that every argument against the PST has its origin in the writings of Socinus. Unfortunately, his writings have not been readily available in English translation. So much of his teaching for the English reader has to be gleaned from secondary sources, usually written by those who opposed his views. Recently, Alan W. Gomes, did an English translation of De Jesu Christo Servatore as a Ph.D dissertation and he graciously sent me a copy (Faustus Socinus’ De Jesu Christo Servatore, Part III: Historical Introduction, Translation and Critical Notes. Pasadena: Fuller Theological Seminary, June 1990). My quotations from Socinus will be from Gomes' translation.

In Part III of De Jesu Christo Servatore, Socinus

"presents arguments and evidence that disprove the idea that Christ, by his death, made satisfaction for our sins to God or to his justice." In this eleven-chapter section, Socinus tries to show the logical and moral—as well as scriptural—impossibilities involved in the theory of satisfaction. He begins (chap. 1) by arguing that God could forgive sins without satisfaction; such an action would not be contrary to his nature or to justice. Next, he attempts to establish that God "was in fact willing" to do so (chap. 2). In chaps. 3-6, Socinus seeks to prove that even if one grants the necessity of satisfaction, Christ could not in any way offer the kind of satisfaction required to satisfy the demands of the punitive justice postulated by the orthodox theory. He could not satisfy justice either through his passive obedience (chap. 4) or through his active obedience (chap. 5). Following this, Socinus assails an argument based on the notion that death is the punishment for sin (chaps. 7-9). According to this argument, since Christ had no sins of his own, he must have died in punishment for our sins. Socinus considers all possible variants of this argument, and rejects all of them as absurd. He then (chap. 10) considers whether it would be moral—or even possible—for God to impute our sins to Christ. Finally, he finishes part three (chap. 11) by arguing that the orthodox theory results in moral laxity, since people regard themselves as already righteous. (Alan W. Gomes, "De Jesu Christo Servatore: Faustus Socinus On The Satisfaction Of Christ," Westminster Theological Journal, 55 [1993], 213-14).

I intend to carefully lay out Socinus' arguments against the PST in a series of posts, beginning today with chapter 1 of Part III of De Jesu Christo Servatore.

1. Man can forgive without exacting a penalty, why can't God?

Now, if a human being can be just in exacting the highest degree of revenge for wrongs suffered but yet may choose not to exact any, we not only say he has the right to forgo revenge but we even praise him to the skies for doing so! If we allow people to do this, we dare not deprive God of that right and power. We shudder at the thought of committing such an abominable sacrilege (pp. 3-4).

2. Punitive justice and mercy are acts of God's will not components of his nature.

[T]he sort of justice, which you claim must be completely satisfied, is not an essential property of God; it is merely an effect of his will. The reason we say that God exercises “justice” when he punishes sinners is so that we might call his action by a worthy name. Likewise, when he spares someone who is guilty, the Scriptures say that he exercises “mercy.” Concerning this punitive justice, God may either satisfy it or not as he sees fit. Consider this additional argument. The fact that God forgives shows that this punitive justice is not one of his essential attributes. If it were, he could never forgive anyone even of the least infraction. This is because God does not and cannot commit any act that is contrary to his essential properties (p.4).

3. If punitive justice and mercy were part of God's nature, then they would be infinite as are his other attributes.

First of all, consider justice. Those who wrongly take the word literally do not see that they are really saying that the severity or wrath of God is infinite, which contradicts the plain scriptural evidence. This evidence, as we have already said, proclaims that God is slow to anger. The kind of divine justice that has no limit is not the kind about which we have been speaking (p. 5).

Consider mercy (that is, the forgiveness of sins). How dare my opponents assert that his mercy is infinite? The passages cited above, as well as the entire Scriptures, establish that God does not always exercise mercy but not infrequently employs vengeance and severity (p. 6).

My opponents make such a terrible mistake because they are convinced that vengeance and mercy are essential to God. They do not perceive that vengeance and mercy are only different effects of the divine will and not actual properties. It is hard to imagine how they rationally can convince themselves of it when, as we have said, vengeance and mercy cancel each other out (p. 7).

Thus, in his first chapter, Socinus establishes the point that God does not need to exact a penalty for every sin in order to forgive it. This of course undercuts the foundation of the PST which states that God must punish sin in order to retain his holiness.