God Has Not Forgiven Us --From Sola Ratione

I have discovered a blog, Sola Ratione, which has some good posts on the penal substitutionary theory of the atonement. With the author's permission, I am going to re-post them here. This one is entitled: God Has Not Forgiven Us.


If Jesus was punished for our sins (in the sense that God's wrath was directed toward him instead of us), then it follows that God has not forgiven us.

To forgive someone means that we have let go of our resentment or anger against them.

It does not mean that we have simply found some innocent bystander upon whom we can dump our anger instead.

This kind of 're-direction' is so outrageously unjust that it's hard to know what to call it.

At best it is a kind of therapeutic device. Rather than direct our anger on the person responsible for causing us harm, we lash out at someone else instead. In so doing we discharge or release our anger to such an extent that we no longer feel anger over what was done to us.

In real life, this phenomenon typically occurs when we have been attacked or bullied by someone who is more powerful than us.

The risk of attacking them is too great. So we deal with our rage by taking it out on someone who is less likely to retaliate.

The aim is to restore a semblance of self-respect and pride, in a situation where we are out-gunned.

Most of us would condemn this approach as highly unethical - on several counts.

1. It doesn't address the original offence.

2. An innocent person is attacked.

3. It is likely to set up an endless chain of revenge-taking (the person we picked on, being less powerful than us, takes their anger out on someone who is less powerful than them, and so on).

But is this what is happening on the cross?

Not exactly.

God doesn't re-direct His anger onto Jesus because He is worried that we might retaliate if He tried it on us.

No, God takes it out on Jesus because He loves us too much. His anger is so strong that if He let rip (as He does to those whom He consigns to Hell) our relationship would not survive.

But there are problems with this version of the story.

To begin, it is rather like a parent who loves his kids to bits, but knows that he has serious anger-management issues.

So when the smaller, more vulnerable kids annoy him, he narrowly avoids killing them - but only by viciously beating up his eldest son. (Fortunately, this son is eminently scapegoatable, given his almost miraculous ability to recover from the most cruel, even murderous beatings!)

Now there's a role model to emulate! Social services, not to mention the police, would be onto such a 'dad' in seconds.

So is that what God is like?

Well, perhaps we have not taken into account the way in which the Triune Godhead is at work here.

On this version, God is more like a father who, again, is so loving that he manages to resist killing his children when they piss him off.

But he only does so by going into his study and punching himself in the face, over and over again, until his anger dissipates.

God, in other words, got into some serious self-harming on the cross - purely as an outlet for his wrath-management problem.

Not a pretty picture.

But again, perhaps we haven't quite caught the analogy.

We sometimes say that, when we forgive, we 'absorb' the anger that we felt toward the person who hurt us.

So perhaps God is doing the same sort of thing. That is, God in the Son 'absorbs' the anger of God the Father.

This sounds much more palatable.

But it doesn't work.

When we say that we 'absorb our anger' in forgiveness, this does not mean that we turn around and 'get angry at ourselves' in order to avoid getting angry at the person who hurt us! No advocate of forgiveness would ever endorse that interpretation.

And yet that is, in effect, what a trinitarian God is doing: God the Father is re-directing his wrath away from us and turning it instead against God the Son.

This is 'absorption' only in the sense in which a self-abuser 'absorbs' the knife blade with which he is slicing his own flesh!

So what do we conclude?

Well, it looks like Jesus did not die on the cross so that God could forgive us.

Forgiveness had nothing to do with it.

Instead, He died so that God could let off some steam.

Thanks God. But next time, it might be easier if you just booked in to see a therapist.

Is Christ held vicariously liable for our sins?--From Sola Ratione

I have discovered a blog, Sola Ratione, which has some good posts on the penal substitutionary theory of the atonement. With the author's permission, I am going to re-post them here. This one is entitled: Is Christ held vicariously liable for our sins?

"I remember once sharing the Gospel with a businessman. When I explained that Christ had died to pay the penalty for our sins, he responded, "Oh, yes, that's imputation." I was stunned, as I never expected this theological concept to be familiar to this non-Christian businessman. When I asked him how he came to be familiar with this idea, he replied, "Oh, we use imputation all the time in the insurance business." He explained to me that certain sorts of insurance policy are written so that, for example, if someone else drives my car and gets in an accident, the responsibility is imputed to me rather than to the driver. Even though the driver behaved recklessly, I am the one held liable; it is just as if I had done it. Now this is parallel to substitutionary atonement. Normally I would be liable for the misdeeds I have done. But through my faith in Christ, I am, as it were, covered by his divine insurance policy, whereby he assumes the liability for my actions. My sin is imputed to him, and he pays its penalty. The demands of justice are fulfilled, just as they are in mundane affairs in which someone pays the penalty for something imputed to him. This is as literal a transaction as those that transpire regularly in the insurance industry." - W. L. Craig, "Question 122, Subject: Penal Theory of the Atonement."

Craig is right to say that the owner of a car can be held vicariously liable for any negligence committed by someone to whom they have loaned their car. But what he omits to mention is that the driver must be using the car primarily for the purpose of performing a task for the owner.

For this kind of imputation to work as a parallel to substitutionary atonement, then, it would have to be the case that when we commit sins, we are acting primarily so as to achieve the purposes of Jesus Christ! Only then could he rightly be held liable for our sinful actions.

Don't think that one is going to work too well!

This kind of 'test' is also used when imputing liability to a corporation for the acts of its employees. A corporation can be held vicariously liable for the acts of its employees only if (1) the employee acted within the scope of their employment; (2) their actions, at least partly, benefited the corporation; and (3) it would be reasonable to impute the employee's acts and intentions to the corporation.

None of these three conditions find a parallel in the doctrine of penal substitution. Quite the opposite in fact.

(1) When we sin, we are acting against what it is that God has demanded of us. (2) It is hard to see how our sinfulness could, even partly, be said to 'benefit' Jesus Christ. (3) It could never be reasonable to impute our sinful acts or our sinful intentions to Christ himself, since he is, by definition, incapable of sin.

Punishment is not an Abstract Commodity --From Sola Ratione

I have discovered a blog, Sola Ratione, which has some good posts on the penal substitutionary theory of the atonement. With the author's permission, I am going to re-post them here. This one is entitled: Punishment is not an Abstract Commodity

"[T]he victim, within limits, has the freedom to decide to what extent and in what manner to inflict punishment. I do not see how this freedom would not extend to accepting a voluntary penal substitute. Take for instance the football player who is late to team practice. The coach of the team punishes the late player by demanding he run 5 laps around the field. The team captain steps forward and asks the coach if he could run the 5 laps in the other's stead. If the coach agrees to such an arrangement, then there does not seem to be anything unjust about this transfer of penalty. I take it this is because in the transfer the initial justification for punishment is still in place – that is the late player's misuse of his team-privileges led to the temporary withdrawal of a team-privilege. Whether the late player of the team captain serves the punishment, the initial justification is the same. And the additional good ends that the punishment is likely to secure (e.g. team unity) are accomplished whether the late player runs the laps or the team captain runs them." - Steven L. Porter "Swinburnian Atonement and the Doctrine of Penal Substitution," Oxford Readings in Philosophical Theology: Volume 1: Trinity, Incarnation, Atonement, edited by Michael Rea (Oxford University Press, 2009): p. 325.

This is an excellent example of just how counter-intuitive penal substitution really is.

Can anyone imagine a team captain asking to run 5 laps on behalf of the late football player? And the coach agreeing to this bizarre transaction?

What message would that send to the late player, let alone his team-mates? 'Don't worry if you do the wrong thing lads. The captain is (literally!) a sucker for punishment, and will cop it on your behalf.'

I don't know what kind of football players Porter is acquainted with, but you don't have to be a total cynic to see that the team is very unlikely to respond well to the captain's offer. 'Team unity' would not be particularly high on the list of possible outcomes.

The players are far more likely to ridicule the captain for being such a 'mug' (or words to that effect). And if this were the only time that the captain had made such an offer, then it is not difficult to foresee the players suspecting favoritism . . . or worse: 'Jeez, what does this guy have on the captain?'

And they would have good reason to question the propriety of what is going on here. This kind of substitution is clearly inappropriate, at almost every level.

How can Porter be so mistaken in his intuitions?

I think the root of the problem is that he thinks that punishment is a kind of abstract commodity. Like hard cash, it really doesn't matter who gives it or who receives it. Its value remains the same: 20 dollars is 20 dollars, no matter who owns it.

Likewise, the value of punishment, Porter thinks, is entirely independent of who it is directed against. If a temporary withdrawal of a team-privilege is warranted by the offending behavior of the late player, then what is required is that there be a temporary withdrawal of a team-privilege. Doesn't really matter who cops it, just so long as they agree to it and know what they're doing.

We can perhaps see just how bizarre this view is, by creating a similar scenario:

Suppose it's pay-time for the football team. The coach is about to hand out their individual pay packets, when the team captain steps forward and asks the coach if he could have all the team's pay for himself, instead of it being distributed to the other players as per usual. If the coach agrees to such an arrangement, then there does not seem to be anything unjust about this transfer. This is because in the transfer the initial justification for the wages being paid is still in place – that is, each player has fulfilled their job description for that month. So it really doesn't matter who takes the pay. The initial justification for the wages being paid is the same.

Doesn't really work, does it!

That's because 'what is deserved' is, morally speaking, inextricably linked to 'the person who deserves it'. Punishment can only be morally justified if it is directed against the person who deserves it. If you break this connection - as is necessarily the case in any penal substitution - the situation immediately becomes morally incoherent, if not repugnant.

Can Penal Substitution be Justified on Utilitarian Grounds? --From Sola Ratione

I have discovered a blog, Sola Ratione, which has some good posts on the penal substitutionary theory of the atonement. With the author's permission, I am going to re-post them here. This one is entitled: Can Penal Substitution be Justified on Utilitarian Grounds?

"[T]he practice of penal substitution in other scenarios seems wrong. We do not think it good for the mother of a convicted rapist to serve his time in prison. I propose that the reason why such a transfer is morally counter-intuitive is that while the victim still has the right to transfer the punishment, the likely good ends of such punishment would not be served by such a transfer. Given that deterrence and prevention are the main potential goods of criminal punishment it is probably never good that such a penalty be transferred, for there is little hope of achieving these goods through a transfer." - Steven L. Porter "Swinburnian Atonement and the Doctrine of Penal Substitution," Oxford Readings in Philosophical Theology: Volume 1: Trinity, Incarnation, Atonement edited by Michael Rea (Oxford University Press, 2009): p. 326.

Just when we thought Porter's theory of punishment was retributivist through and through, it turns out that he is a utilitarian after all. What else could he mean by saying that: "deterrence and prevention are the main potential goods of criminal punishment."

Clearly, there is some confusion in Porter's mind here – and no doubt he would retract this statement, and revert to his usual retributivism, if its consequences were pointed out. But it is worth taking him seriously at this point, just to expose the trouble that a utilitarian version of penal substitution will encounter.

Let's suppose that the father of a convicted rapist agrees to serve the time in prison on behalf of his son. No one but the judge, the son and the victim knows about this transfer. So far as the public are concerned, the right man has been jailed.

Let's also assume that the son is duly chastened by his father's amazing sacrifice, and turns his life around. He does not re-offend, and goes on to live his life as an up-standing citizen.

In such a case, it looks like the penal substitution has brought about the "main potential goods of criminal punishment". We have both specific and general deterrence (so far as that is ever possible) in the bag.

And yet.

An innocent man has been punished, with the full knowledge and authorization of the legal system. This is outrageous. It makes no difference at all that the transaction was voluntary, or that the good of deterrence was achieved.

It is morally wrong to punish the innocent. Period.

Private citizens, even victims, can offer themselves up as sacrificial lambs if they like. But our legal officials have the right to over-rule this offer – as a matter of justice, and as is their duty as upholders of the 'rule of law' values of impartiality, independence and consistency. As Andrew Ashworth puts it:

"Just because a person commits an offence against me, however, that does not privilege my voice above that of the court (acting 'in the general public interest') in the matter of the offender's punishment. A justification for this lies in social contract reasoning, along the lines that the state may be said to undertake the duty of administering justice and protecting citizens in return for citizens giving up their right to self-help (except in cases of urgency) in the cause of better social order. " A. Ashworth, "Responsibilities, Rights and Restorative Justice" Brit. J. Criminology (2002) 42: 578-595: p. 585.

De Facto and de Jure Penal Substitution --From Sola Ratione

I have discovered a blog, Sola Ratione, which has some good posts on the penal substitutionary theory of the atonement. With the author's permission, I am going to re-post them here. This one is entitled: De Facto and de Jure Penal Substitution.

"If the friend gives the offender a gift sufficient to pay the fine, we have a de facto case of penal substitution. Whoever may sign the cheque, it is the friend who mainly suffers the loss that was meant to be the offender's punishment. . . . If we were single-mindedly against penal substitution, and yet we saw that preventing it in the case of fines was impractical . . . we ought to conclude that fines are an unsatisfactory form of punishment. . . . We might not abandon fines, because the alternatives might have their own drawbacks. But our dissatisfaction ought to show. Yet it does not show. The risk of de facto penal substitution ought to be a frequently mentioned drawback of punishment by fines. It is not. And that is why I maintain that all of us, not just some Christians, are of two minds about penal substitution. . . . [B]oth sides agree that penal substitution sometimes makes sense after all, even if none can say how it makes sense. And if both sides agree to that, that is some evidence that somehow they might both be right." - David K. Lewis, "Do we believe in penal substitution?" in Papers in ethics and social philosophy, Volume 3, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000): p. 134-35.

This is hardly a ringing endorsement of the doctrine of penal substitution, which is not surprising given that Lewis is an atheist. Even so, Lewis's argument is flawed.

The chief problem is that he has used an example involving a de facto penal substitution to defend the moral coherence of a de jure penal substitution. But the two are miles apart, morally speaking.

The criminal justice system cannot prevent a friend from, clandestinely, paying an offender's fine on their behalf. But this is very different from the court authorizing such a transaction, treating it as if it were a right and lawful exchange. No judge would ever explicitly sanction, let alone impose de jure penal substitution – even if they are unable to prevent the de facto version.

Yet, the penal substitution of Jesus Christ was pre-planned, authorized, carried out and proclaimed from the hill-tops by God, 'the righteous judge of all'. There is nothing de facto, illicit or behind-the-scenes about 'Christ dying for our sins' at all.

It gets worse.

Theologically, the victim of our sinfulness is none other than God in the person of Christ. So imagine, if you will, a judge turning to the victim of an offence in open court and saying, 'Look, the offender clearly can't pay the fine. So I'd like you to pay it for him. What do you think?'

Even if the victim agreed to this transaction ('Thy will be done'), can you imagine the outcry?

Or again, suppose the fine was so colossal that the victim would be made utterly bankrupt by paying it off: he would lose his house, all his possessions and any savings. Under this scenario, we can well imagine that the victim might be 'sweating blood' over the thought of his impending sacrifice!

But how likely is it that the judge would get away with this bizarre request? Would it not be universally denounced? Politicians, penal theorists, victim groups and journalists would, with one voice, condemn the transaction.

It doesn't change things in the least to suppose that the victim, in this case, is also the judge himself (as is the case in the divine transaction). For a start, this equation would only weaken the analogy even further, since no judge would ever be permitted to serve in a case in which he or she was the victim in question!

But let us suppose that this was legally possible, and that the judge, as the victim, offered to pay off the offender's debt himself. This would still not be morally or legally acceptable. The judge's wish would be interpreted by the public and the entire judiciary as little more than a kind of self-harming exercise, or a misguided martyrdom. His own views and preferences would be over-ruled– as they often are – by the public interest and the rule of law.

If anyone is to be punished, then justice demands that they deserve it; and they can only deserve it if they are personally culpable for the wrongdoing in question.

In short, the concept of de jure penal substitution, in the human context, would violate the fundamental principles of any retributive theory of justice, not to mention the central purpose and rationale of our entire legal system.

It cannot, therefore, be used to lend analogical support to the Christian doctrine of penal substitution.

Why Did Jesus Choose to Die?--From Sola Ratione

I have discovered a blog, Sola Ratione, which has some good posts on the penal substitutionary theory of the atonement. With the author's permission, I am going to re-post them here. This one is entitled: Why Did Jesus Choose to Die?

"It is either foolish or suicidal to die voluntarily unless there is some great good that can only or best be accomplished by voluntarily dying. . . . [So] Christ must have had a great good in mind that could only or best be accomplished by voluntarily dying [on the cross]. . . . The only great good that can justify a voluntary death is if that death saves other lives, and the only theory of atonement that makes sense of why the death of Jesus would save other lives is the theory of penal substitution. . . . Therefore, the doctrine of penal substitution is the only adequate explanation of Christ's voluntary death on the cross." - Steve L. Porter, "Dostoyevsky, Woody Allen, and the Doctrine of Penal Substitution", in Paul Copan and William Lane Craig, eds., Contending with Christianity's Critics (Broadman and Holman, 2009) 233-248: p. 244-45, 248.

If Porter is right here, then it follows that Christ must have thought that his death on the cross would act as a 'penal substitute' and thereby save us from physical and spiritual death. Put another way, Porter is implying here that Christ believed in the doctrine of penal substitution.

I have argued elsewhere that Porter's article gives us no reason to think that this doctrine is morally defensible. But since Porter's view is that penal substitution is the only 'great good' that could have justified Christ's voluntary death, it follows that he must have given up his life for no good reason.

Of course, Jesus would not have been the first person in history to have sacrificed his life in vain. Nor the last. There are countless men and women who have mistakenly believed that the only way someone's life could be saved would be if they sacrificed their own.

Some of these brave souls clearly should have given the matter a little more thought before they took the fatal plunge. We can often know, well in advance, that laying down our life will not save the life of another. Porter gives us a useful example:

"We think it either foolish or suicidal when a person jumps in front of a speeding train proclaiming love for a friend. Unless, of course, the friend (or someone else) is in front of the speeding train and jumping in front of the train was the only way to save that person." (p. 245)

But being foolish is not the same as making an honest mistake. It is more likely that Jesus was simply applying the (flawed) moral concepts and theological principles available to him at the time. In that case, he was just unlucky rather than foolish.

Porter, of course, thinks that Christ's decision to submit to death on the cross could not have been an act of foolishness; nor could it have been just an honest mistake on the part of Jesus. But both of these explanations can only be ruled out if the theory of penal substitution can be morally justified – which, as I (along with many others) have argued, it is not.

Is the Doctrine of Penal Substitution Morally Plausible?--From Sola Ratione

I have discovered a blog, Sola Ratione, which has some good posts on the penal substitutionary theory of the atonement. With the author's permission, I am going to re-post them here. The first one is entitled: Is the Doctrine of Penal Substitution Morally Plausible?

"In order to establish the moral framework that grounds the central claim of penal substitution it will be argued that (1) punishment is an appropriate response to intentional human wrongdoing and (2) it is good in some circumstances for humans to exact that punishment. We will then proceed to argue from the human context to the divine context: (3) punishment is an appropriate divine response to intentional human wrongdoing and (4) it is good in some circumstances for God to exact that punishment on wrongdoers, and (5) the goodness of such punishment can still be achieved by God's taking that punishment upon Himself in the person of Jesus Christ." - Steve L. Porter, "Dostoyesvky, Woody Allen, and the Doctrine of Penal Substitution", in Paul Copan and William Lane Craig, eds., Contending with Christianity's Critics (Broadman and Holman, 2009) 233-248: p. 238.

This is an analogical argument. Porter argues that there are key similarities between human and divine punishment; so if the former is morally plausible, then the latter is likely to be as well.

But it takes little more than a cursory reading of the quote above to notice that the human context, upon which the analogy is based, is missing a key element.

Let's accept, for the sake of argument, that, from (1) and (2), we can infer, by analogy, (3) and (4). But upon what basis do we arrive at (5)? And is not (5) the chief cause of the moral controversy about the doctrine of penal substitution?

Earlier in the piece, Porter tries to divert our attention by suggesting that the real reason why so many have rejected this doctrine is that punishment, per se, is felt, by many, to be morally unnecessary, if not repugnant.

"[There is] and increasing tendency to see an emphasis on punishment as in some sense outdated or inhumane. The common idea is that we, let alone God, have moved beyond such primitive and violent ways of dealing with our anger. . . . [This] shift in intuitions regarding punishment . . . helps to explain why there has been a recent resurgence of objectors to penal substitution." p. 234.

This is a red herring. The vast majority of those who reject a penal substitutionary theory of the atonement do so because they cannot see how it could be morally acceptable for the punishment that is deserved by an offender (human sinners) to be 'taken on by' or 'transferred to' the innocent victim (God in the person of Jesus Christ). Or, as Porter puts it:

"[T]he central claim [of the doctrine of penal substitution] is that in His voluntary suffering and death, Christ takes on the penal consequences of sin on behalf of human sinners." p. 237

Moreover, those who have objected to this doctrine typically do so by arguing that this transaction has no (morally defensible) analogy within the human domain. It is this key objection that Porter, in this article, seems to side-step altogether.

To explain:

The problem with penal substitution is that it entails that someone can be punished even if they in no way deserve this treatment - even if they are the innocent victim of the wrongdoing in question. The doctrine breaks the moral connection between culpability and punishment. The guilt or innocence of the person being punished is beside the point.

This violates one of the most widely held moral intuitions that we have. The most serious wrong that can be committed by our criminal justice system is to punish the innocent. And it is far worse if it does so knowingly. It is precisely to honor this deeply embedded intuition that we have such elaborate and expensive court systems. This principle is part of what we mean by 'the rule of law'.

None of this is given even a passing mention by Porter. He more or less just asserts that it does not matter, from a moral point of view, who is punished. What is important about punishment is not that it is directed against the guilty. Rather, it is that the punishment must objectively re-express the value of the victim, and that the wrongdoing is seen to be taken with utter seriousness. And this expressive function, he supposes, can be achieved even if the punishment is taken on by an innocent victim.

"The goodness of the punishment is still seen in that Christ's going to the cross for our sins takes sinners and their sin with utter seriousness and objectively reexpresses the value of the God head in response to the devaluing of the Godhead expressed by human sin. By looking to the cross, we too can perceive the importance God attaches to us, to the gravity of our offense, and to the right valuing of the Godhead." p. 243.

But it is not difficult to see how there could be no morally justifiable human parallel to this claim. Imagine if a judge were to sentence the innocent victim of a crime to 10 years in prison, and used the following justification in his supporting statement:

"I believe that sentencing the victim to 10 years of penal servitude takes the offender and his crime with utter seriousness and objectively reexpresses the value of the victim in response to the devaluing of their human dignity and worth expressed by the crime."

The judge would, with absolute justification, be removed from the bench within seconds.

In short, so far as this article is concerned, Porter has not provided us with any reason to think that "Christ's suffering the penal consequences of human sin on behalf of sinners" is remotely plausible from a moral point of view.