Atonement, Nature of Jesus, etc.

[Andrew]

I've never had a firm grip on these things and am wondering whether you can help me out.

Why did the Son of God need to take flesh in order to pay the debt burden of the world? I've never had a satisfying answer to that question. Why couldn't the relationship severance between God the Father and God the Son that occurred on the Cross simply occur in heaven?

Furthermore I've noted JP's scheme on atonement. It reads:

1. God is infinitely good.

2. All sin and evil are therefore, morally, an infinite distance from God.

3. Any who commit sin/evil, therefore, are an infinite distance from God's standard of goodness. There is an infinite gulf between God and the sinner.

4. Our finiteness means that we are unable, ourselves, to pay for/atone for our sins, for we cannot cover by any means that infinite distance with finite human works.

5. Therefore, an infinite "gulf bridger" is required, one who is perfect and therefore not an infinite distance from God.

6. As a corollary, one who accepts the payment offered by this "bridger" of the gulf ought, sensibly, to be aware of this price that has been paid and respond accordingly. One who does not respond accordingly, we may suggest, is not appreciative of the paid price and may not truly have accepted the gift.

Could this infinite gulf be satisfied by a single sinless human? In other words, does Jesus humanity have much part in the judicial outpouring of God the Father?

Thanks in advance.

[Solly]

Andrew, hello, and briefly...

03-14-2003 @ 12:20 PM Andrew:

I've never had a firm grip on these things and am wondering whether you can help me out.

Why did the Son of God need to take flesh in order to pay the debt burden of the world? I've never had a satisfying answer to that question. Why couldn't the relationship severance between God the Father and God the Son that occurred on the Cross simply occur in heaven?

He did not pay the debt burden for the world, but for his people Mt 1.21. That debt was paid through substitution and union. Substitution, because he took our place; Union, because we were in him when he did it, and the wrath of God was poured out on him rather than us. We were sheltered from the storm. Heb 2.16-18 also shows that he continues to be effective for his people, and his incarnation is a necessary part of it.

Furthermore I've noted JP's scheme on atonement. It reads:

1. God is infinitely good.

2. All sin and evil are therefore, morally, an infinite distance from God.

3. Any who commit sin/evil, therefore, are an infinite distance from God's standard of goodness. There is an infinite gulf between God and the sinner.

4. Our finiteness means that we are unable, ourselves, to pay for/atone for our sins, for we cannot cover by any means that infinite distance with finite human works.

5. Therefore, an infinite "gulf bridger" is required, one who is perfect and therefore not an infinite distance from God.

6. As a corollary, one who accepts the payment offered by this "bridger" of the gulf ought, sensibly, to be aware of this price that has been paid and respond accordingly. One who does not respond accordingly, we may suggest, is not appreciative of the paid price and may not truly have accepted the gift.

Could this infinite gulf be satisfied by a single sinless human? In other words, does Jesus humanity have much part in the judicial outpouring of God the Father?

By a single sinless human being (if such a person could exist), no. The Bridge Builder is also God. that is how he bridges the gap. but be aware that it is not a physical gap of finitude/infinitude, but a moral one. The parties are estranged; Christ is a Mediator.
Your point in item 6 (wehther yours or JPs I dont know) misses the fact that Christ was sent by the Father; one of the estranged parties has taken the initiative to resolve the issue. He gave his only begotten Son, by his determinate counsel and foreknowledge (Acts 2.23) that he might be crucified; therefore the receiver of the payment is the giver of the sacrifice.

[Mikeb]

Andrew,

There are other ways to look at Christ’s story of redemption. One of them is to consider the kind of innocence Christ gave us. Was this innocence under the law or delivery from the law?

There are two kinds of innocence, two separate states that properly wear the name innocence. The first kind of innocence is a product of adjudication, of the applying laws to human behavior. The second kind of innocence is an exemption from the law, existing in a state where laws do not apply.

The first state of innocence is demonstrated easily enough in the operation of the criminal justice system. A person is adjudged innocent, or not guilty, when the prosecution fails to produce enough evidence to prove that a person's behaviors violated the law. Applying the laws through the apparatus of the criminal justice system, we determine whether or not a person's behaviors violate criminal law. If that application determines those behaviors did violate the law, we label them guilty. If the application determines that the behaviors did not violate the law, we label them not guilty.

The second state of innocence exempts behaviors from the application of the law. Most would say that the actions of infants and small children fall into this category. All would say, I think, that the behaviors of animals do. These actions occur in a state of innocence because they are undertaken by beings without a knowledge of good and evil. Even though the action of an animal might cause harm or do evil, we do not adjudge them guilty because we recognize that they were acting by instinct, without knowledge of the good or evil they might cause.

Now, my question to those who read this post is, Does the remission of sin, the innocence Christ offers us, salvation, deliver us into the first or second state of innocence?

In other words, are empowered by our salvation to do what is good and resist evil (thus remaining under the law and becoming an advocate for it), or are we delivered into a state of premoral innocence, a state of exemption from the law?

My question arises from Christ act of salvation itself, from his shedding his blood for the remission or forgiveness of our sins.

While Christ's act of surrender in the Garden of Gethsemene was an act under and of the law, the act itself was a specific rejection of empowerment in the law. As Christ stated, he could have called upon his Father and "12 legion of angles" to enforce the righteous.

If fact, Christ's rejection of empowerment, is key to the remission of sins He offers us under the law. If Christ had embraced His own empowerment, if He had called upon the power of His Father, then He could have easily done away with sin and established His own righteous, sin-free rule.

Because Christ chose not to exercise this power, he stood himself with us as co-author of our sins. Christ, in effect, said "I take on the guilt for your sins because I could have prevented it, I could have created a sin free world but I chose not to. Therefore the guilt for your sins resides first on me."

Isn't then, our belief that Christ's salvation gives us empowerment under the law not only a rejection new Eden, the true innocence He offered, but also a rejection of Christ's own turning away from empowerment under the law?

It may well be that simple substitutional salvation that Christendom offers, the surrogate sacrifice we participate in through our faith is not, perhaps, the way of Christ, the straight and narrow. Perhaps Christ beckons us to follow him through Calvary and out of this world of law we created in Eden.

[Andrew]

Solly, you would suggest John the Baptist was wrong when he referred to Jesus as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world?

Does anyone have an answer to the need to incarnation?

[ACFaith.Com]

Why did the Son of God need to take flesh in order to pay the debt burden of the world?

Two things:

1) Thoe who advocate penal substitution might say that God didn't need to do such a thing but it was good for him to require satisfaction for sin in such a way. This makes the view a little more tenable.

2) But it is not tenable as far as I am concerned because outside of theological circles most christians probably do not make this distinction. Preaching which advocates the doctrine of "penal substituion" is not gospel. It is simply not "good news" at all.

From Robin Collins: "Consider starving children in Africa. What is the Gospel message of the Penal and Satisfaction theory to them? "Even though most of your life you have been starving, and your brain barely functions, and you have been abused by others who have killed your parents, raped you, and deprived you of food, you are guilty before God and deserving of eternal punishment and torment in Hell. In fact, the torment you have endured all your life is infinitely less than you actually deserve. But I have good news for you! God has paid the penalty for your sins! He has endured the infinite punishment...." Does this sound like what the central Gospel message to those people should be?"

1. God is infinitely good.

How do we mean by infinite? In a quantitiative or Qualitative sense?

2. All sin and evil are therefore, morally, an infinite distance from God.

"Morally", rather than "spatially". How one can be an "infinte" disatance (even morally) away from something seems rather dubious.

3. Any who commit sin/evil, therefore, are an infinite distance from God's standard of goodness. There is an infinite gulf between God and the sinner.

What again is meant by an infinite gulf? Can we define this concept? Is it emotive talk with no real substance? Is it even meaningful? Why not just say, "sin separates us from God?" Why all the "infinite" talk?

4. Our finiteness means that we are unable, ourselves, to pay for/atone for our sins, for we cannot cover by any means that infinite distance with finite human works.

5. Therefore, an infinite "gulf bridger" is required, one who is perfect and therefore not an infinite distance from God.

Why is an infinite "gulf bridger" required? Who said our sins "need" to be payed for?

Could God not, with his "infinite" mercy, "infinite"forgiveness and "infinite" compassion forgive? I can see why God might want to require satisfaction i nsuch a way so as to alet us to the gravity of our sin and of the consequences of it (our state of seperation from God). But why would God need our sins to be payed for. Why would God need to sacrifice himself to save us?

6. As a corollary, one who accepts the payment offered by this "bridger" of the gulf ought, sensibly, to be aware of this price that has been paid and respond accordingly. One who does not respond accordingly, we may suggest, is not appreciative of the paid price and may not truly have accepted the gift.

So guilt a transferrable commodity like money in a bank account? That seems very dubious. Further, isn't "sin" something that is "done" or "performed" rather than a "thing" which could be literally "taken on" by Jesus? It seems problematic to say that a mans death was the necessary payment for for the sins of the world.

Could a repentent sinner be reconcioled to God with or without Jesus' death? I would say yes. What reason is there to think otherwise. In Mark 2:5 didn't Jesus pronounce sins forgiven?

Solly, you would suggest John the Baptist was wrong when he referred to Jesus as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world?

I do not think there is any positive historical evidence backing up the historicity of that line attributed to JBap in GJohn. In fact, that material is very suspect and I think the data decisively leans against historicity.

But even if you accept it, who said JBap meant that statement in the same way many Christians, 2000 years later, think he did?

Vinnie

[ACFaith.Com]

More from Robbin Collins:

But this is exactly what these two theories do. They only eliminate our puzzlement regarding the doctrine of the Atonement by introducing two new claims that are at least as perplexing: namely, 1) the claim that God cannot simply forgive our sin but must demand repayment, even if we repent and deeply recognize the wrongness of our acts, and 2) the claim that the debt of obligation or punishment for our sin can be paid by another, namely Christ, and that this satisfies the demands of the moral order. It is especially difficult to see how this latter claim could be true, particularly once we take into account that according to orthodox Christian doctrine Christ is God, and hence one of the persons who we have sinned against, one of the "victims" of our crimes. If I were to stab you, neither justice nor the moral order would be satisfied by you, the victim, causing yourself further suffering by, for example, whipping or hanging yourself in order to pay the penalty for my crime.

In response to this logical problem, people commonly try to make sense of these theories by appealing to legal cases in which one person pays the debt of another, such as a parent paying her child's traffic ticket. This response, however, fails, for although this type of event commonly happens, the laws that allow it to happen, such as speeding laws, are not designed to institute the demands of justice, but rather to keep order in society (i.e., they are civil laws). Instead, the truly analogous legal cases are those in which we think that justice demands punishment, such as in murder cases (i.e. those involving criminal laws). But these are the very cases in which we do not think that justice is satisfied by someone else paying the criminal's penalty, such as a mother going to the electric chair in place of her son. In Anselm's time, however, even criminal offenses such as murder were handled like traffic tickets with the payment of money, because the concern of that society was not so much to ensure justice for the victim as to prevent violent retaliation by the victim's family, and the social chaos which would result from blood feuds of this sort. In the medieval legal system, therefore, not only could money substitute for punishment, but it didn't even matter who paid the money. This is why the notion that a third party could pay a criminal's debt of obligation, and that this could adequately substitute for a criminal punishment such as a death penalty, made some sense within Anselm's culture, but we now feel it doesn't really satisfy the demands of justice.

A site where you can find the paper:
http://www.messiah.edu/hpages/facstaff/rcollins/Atone.htm

I like Collins' view. But I accept the solidarity atonement model as advocated by Meta (aka Metacrock) over here:

http://www.geocities.com/metacrock2000/Theology/salvation_others1.html

Vinnie

[ACFaith.Com]

Oh yeah, Aquinas is one person who advocated the notion that Jesus' death was not absolutely necessary for forgiveness but that it was good for God to require satisfaction in such a way.

Vinnie

[Andrew]

C'mon, theologians, help! I have to discuss this with some people soon!

[Arminian]

C'mon, theologians, help! I have to discuss this with some people soon!

Hebrews says the blood of bulls and goats (any animal, for that matter) was unable to deal with sin. The idea is that those sacrifices provided a covering until the arrival of Messiah. God required His blood, so he had to be physical.

[ACFaith.Com]

Today @ 08:47 AM
Andrew:

C'mon, theologians, help! I have to discuss this with some people soon!

I am writing something right now called "problems With penal Substituion". I am on objection number nine now and should be done within 2 days. Not sure if you are looking for a defense of penal substitution or a critique of it but I am offering the latter. If you want to know of alterations of penal substituions that are modified to make it more tenable I could email you a couple of papers I received written by people on these subjects. many people "rethink" penal substituion and the end-product is much more tenable than the 6 points you cited from J.P. Scheme on atonement.

As neak peak at number 3:

*******************

[3] The PS model claims that God cannot simply forgive our sin even if we are truly repentant. His justice demands payment or satisfaction. This is an instance of introducing a questionable claim that was talked about above. Immediately one should ask why God couldn’t forgive a repentant sinner without payment or satisfaction for sin? There is no clear justification as to why God must require payment.

It certainly would be proper for God to punish sinners. He has a right to collect on the debt we have incurred through our sin but the PS model leaves us wondering why God cannot forego his right and freely forgive a truly repentant sinner? Anselm and many today have argued that God’s morality would not tolerate forgiveness without punishment or repayment. “But how so? Human persons often forgive without demanding satisfaction or punishment, especially when the wrongdoer is apologetic and repentant, and this does not appear to be morally egregious. There is seemingly no moral principle available which would ground Anselm’s position that either satisfaction or punishment is a necessary precursor to divine forgiveness.”[5]

Steve Porter noted three reasons for rejecting the notion that punishment is necessary for forgiveness: “First, there is a strong leaning in church history towards the view that God could have affected atonement for sins in any way that he pleased, but that the way he did was fitting for this or that reason. Almost all of the early church fathers, including Augustine, and the majority of mediaeval theologians, including Aquinas, took this line.* Second, that God is free to forgive without punishment squares with widespread moral intuition and moral experience that forgiveness without punishment is not only possible, but virtuous. Third, a traditional Christian belief is that God is sovereign over all things, and while there are some logically impossible things that even a sovereign God cannot do, it seems odd that one of these impossibilities is forgiveness without punishment when humans do this regularly. In fact, Jesus taught that persons should forgive without demanding recompense, and more significantly, he practiced this teaching in his own life.** Finally, I will simply have to assert that I do not find the theological arguments in support of the necessity of punishment compelling.*** So I propose that it is a reasonable shift to maintain that divine punishment of sinners is not morally necessary for forgiveness.[6]

This shift is common in theological circles. Jesus’ death was not necessary for forgiveness, but it was good of God to require some satisfaction for sin. Several reasons are advanced why and I have read several papers[7] written by exegetes who rethink “penal substitution”. They modify substantially the understanding outlined above. When properly understood, these modifications of the PS model make it much more tenable and I think they may capture a part of the truth of the doctrine of the atonement. But I will not be advocating a replacement theory of atonement in this article.

****************

Vinnie

[ACFaith.Com]

I finished early.

Hot off the press!

http://www.acfaith.com/penal.html

Here I point out ten difficulties with the most popular Western understanding of Jesus' death on the cross. Instead of making evident the significance of Jesus' death on the cross, the PS model of atonement raises insurmountable difficulties and distorts the image of God.

Vinnie

[Chappie]

03-18-2003 @ 08:47 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=38639#post38639)
Andrew:

C'mon, theologians, help! I have to discuss this with some people soon!

When we ask the question, why did God do this or that, never can the answer be because he had to. God does the things the way that he does them for reasons that are peculiar to being God.

He came up with a plan of salvation that pleased him. So, in answer to your original question, the answer is because that the way he wanted it to be.

So why did Christ have to come in the flesh? Because it was part of his plan to propitiate a debt owed by man, and there is no scapegoat for man. Our redeemer had to be human.

Gen 3:15
15And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.

From this point forward, our redeemer had to be of the seed of a woman....

:cheers:

The simpliest answer is always the best. Man tends to want to complicate things for his own aggrandizement....

[jpholding]

Hmm, called me in here kind of late, didn't you, Andrew? :smile:

Solly:

He did not pay the debt burden for the world, but for his people Mt 1.21.

Functionally and practically I agree. Though it does not affect Andrew's point from my answer's perspective.

By a single sinless human being (if such a person could exist), no. The Bridge Builder is also God. that is how he bridges the gap.

Agreed. Actually I do not miss this point as much as assume it.


ACFaith.Com:

(Who is where these days, I wonder?)

Preaching which advocates the doctrine of "penal substituion" is not gospel. It is simply not "good news" at all.

It isn't? It tells of the problem and its solution. The persons Collins speaks of would most likely get the sort of break given to infants or the Lewis' Calormene soldier. It is also a straw man of emotion erected: "Does this sound like what the central Gospel message to those people should be?" Though to speak of "central" is misleading. The Gospel messages comes as a whole.

How do we mean by infinite? In a quantitiative or Qualitative sense?

The latter.

"Morally", rather than "spatially". How one can be an "infinte" disatance (even morally) away from something seems rather dubious.

Not in the least. Why? Just saying so is not an answer.

What again is meant by an infinite gulf? Can we define this concept? Is it emotive talk with no real substance?

The response here is much closer to that. :smile: Anyone who cannot define "infinite" need only consult a dictionary. Practically speaking it means that one cannot get from here to there.

Why is an infinite "gulf bridger" required? Who said our sins "need" to be payed for?

Try telling that to the judge or the victim of a crime. :ahem:

Could God not, with his "infinite" mercy, "infinite"forgiveness and "infinite" compassion forgive?

No. False analysis. Glenn Miller did an excellent article on this. The atonement is the compromise between infinite mercy and infinite holiness/justice.

So guilt a transferrable commodity like money in a bank account? That seems very dubious.

Saying things are "dubious" without explaining WHY seems to be one of ACF's favorite tactics.

Further, isn't "sin" something that is "done" or "performed" rather than a "thing" which could be literally "taken on" by Jesus?

No. The categories are far from mutually exclusive. If so, why?

Could a repentent sinner be reconcioled to God with or without Jesus' death? I would say yes. What reason is there to think otherwise. In Mark 2:5 didn't Jesus pronounce sins forgiven?

Decontextualized comment. The healed man recognized Jesus' identity as God's broker. That he did not know what acts Jesus had to perform to gain that authority is of no relevance. God's timelessness means that the atonement paid for sins past, present and future.

I do not think there is any positive historical evidence backing up the historicity of that line attributed to JBap in GJohn. In fact, that material is very suspect and I think the data decisively leans against historicity.

Reasons, being? Let's not have these arbitrary pronoucements all over the place...

But even if you accept it, who said JBap meant that statement in the same way many Christians, 2000 years later, think he did?

The spectre of the vague unknown. What else is it going to mean in context? An excellent way to throw out anything we find inconvenient.

[Andrew]

Thanks for visiting, JP. :smile:

I'd like to hear your thoughts on this question in particular:

Why did the Son of God need to take flesh in order to pay the debt burden of the world? I've never had a satisfying answer to that question. Why couldn't the relationship severance between God the Father and God the Son that occurred on the Cross simply occur in heaven?

[Xmansmommy]

Andrew, this is a majorly tough question. :hrm: But we do see that God wanted us to know that Jesus (God in the flesh) took upon Himself the same types of burdens and temptations that we do. Perhaps to teach us that temptation can be overcome (Hebrews 4:15.) I am of the thought that His temptations were real and He literaly had them....yet He chose not to sin. That's the only way I can view the passages where He was tempted and have them mean what they say. Sorry to go all off topic though.

As for the need for the cross? Well the scriptures say...

Le:17:11: For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul.

See also Hebrews chapters 9 and 10. Why is the blood necessary to make atonement? I don't know :shrug: I guess it all goes back to Lev 17:11. If God in heaven did not have blood, nor sinful flesh, how could He have reconciled sinful flesh to Himself when He said that the blood is required?

Great topic Andrew! :thumb:

[jpholding]

Today @ 05:43 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=210890#post210890)
Andrew:

Thanks for visiting, JP. :smile:

I'd like to hear your thoughts on this question in particular:

Why did the Son of God need to take flesh in order to pay the debt burden of the world? I've never had a satisfying answer to that question. Why couldn't the relationship severance between God the Father and God the Son that occurred on the Cross simply occur in heaven?

Ah. I think this has to do with the corporate mentality of the ancients. A human had to pay for human sin. Does that make sense? (I mean practically -- as individualists this will NOT make sense to us automatically...you have to get in their heads to make sense of it sometimes.)

[Andrew]

Surely God isn't bound by the mentality of ancient peoples, though.

[Andrew]

I have a book called the Trinitarian Faith by a T.F. Torrance. We read (at 148f):

"As St Paul had expressed it: 'God our Saviour desires all men to be saved and to come to knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and there is one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for all.' For Athanasius this meant that the mediation of Christ involved a twofold movement, from God to man and from man to God, and that both divine and human activity in Christ must be issuing from one Person. Here we see again the soteriological significance of the Nicene homoousion: If Jesus Christ the incarnate Son is not true God from true God, the we are not saved, for it is only God who can save; but if Jesus Christ is not truly man, then salvation does not touch our human existence and condition."

That reads nicely, but I don't understand it. :help: If the punishment for our sins involves a judical outpouring of wrath from the Father onto the Son and this satisfies 'the debt', how is there any hindrance in our relationship with God? What does, "if Jesus Christ is not truly man, then salvation does not touch our human existence and condition" mean? If our sins could be paid in heaven, what difference does it make?

[Kenny]

03-19-2003 @ 06:47 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=39535#post39535)
ACFaith.Com:

I finished early.

Hot off the press!

http://www.acfaith.com/penal.html

Here I point out ten difficulties with the most popular Western understanding of Jesus' death on the cross. Instead of making evident the significance of Jesus' death on the cross, the PS model of atonement raises insurmountable difficulties and distorts the image of God.

Vinnie

Recently, I wrote a paper responding to criticism leveled against the penal substitution model of atonement given by Joel B. Green and Mark D. Baker in their book Recovering the Scandal of the Cross (InterVarsity Press, 2000). Their criticisms were many of the common ones -- the PSM lends itself to a false conception of God, that it neglects the ethical and exemplary character of the cross, that it encourages passivity in the face of oppression and encourages victimization, that it has nothing to say concerning issues of social justice, etc. I respond by expanding on an insight that comes from C.S. Lewis concerning the moral value of retributive punishment as lying in the fact that it does not allow those who perpetrate evil to continue in the illusion that their actions find no moral opposition in the universe. In other words, the primary value of punishment lies in its revelatory function – it exposes evil and reveals it in all the existential horror that it truly is. The following except from my paper builds from there. I post it because I think it addresses many of your criticisms as well.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If punishment is understood primarily in terms of the exposure of evil, then to say that, “God is holy and cannot associate with anyone corrupted by sin” is just to say that God’s goodness will not allow evil to go unexposed and unopposed in the divine presence. Likewise, to say “because God is just, he must punish us for our sin” is just to say that God, in God’s goodness, will and must reveal the truth about human evil by bringing to light its full existential horror and ugliness. This entails that humans will experience eternal condemnation in the presence of God rather than eternal fellowship with God unless some alternate means of exposure are found.

Green and Baker criticize the penal substitution model on the grounds that it makes “God’s ability to love and relate to humans circumscribed by something outside of God – that is, an abstract concept of justice instructs God as to how God must behave.” But, if the above explanation holds, then to say that God must punish sin is just to say that God’s character is such that God will not allow evil to remain hidden. God must reveal evil for what it is. Not only the goodness of God demands this, but the truthfulness of God demands it as well. For God not to expose evil for the horror that it is would essentially mean that God has allowed a lie to prevail over the truth, and this, the very Origin of truth, cannot and will not do. Thus, God’s diligence punishing evil does not flow out of a vindictive heart, but out of a passion that goodness and truth prevail.

Along these same lines, to say that “God the Father sends his Son to earth to suffer the punishment we deserve by dying on the cross,” entails that in some sense, God the Father has exposed human evil through the suffering, death, shame and condemnation that Jesus experienced on the cross rather than exposing it by handing us over to the eternal suffering, death, shame and condemnation that our sin would have otherwise justly brought upon us. Likewise, to say, “since Jesus has paid the penalty for us, God can regard us as not guilty” and that “if we believe that we are sinners deserving of hell, but that Jesus died in our place, then we can be in relationship with God and go to heaven” is just to say that God has already exposed the existential horror of human evil through the condemnation that Christ received on the cross. Thus, those human beings who find themselves appropriately related to what Christ has done through faith will not, because there is no longer any need, have their evil exposed through their own condemnation before God. “If that is so,” one might ask, “how exactly does it work?” How does Christ’s death on the cross expose human evil and how does that exposure become a substitute for our own condemnation? There are a variety of mutually complimentary answers that could be given. I will discus two of them.

First, we might note, for example, how in passages such as 2 Corinthians 5:21 and Galatians 2:19-20, Paul speaks of our partaking of the benefits of Christ’s atoning death and resurrection in the context of participation and exchange. By entering the Christian community, we become mystically united with Christ, and thus mystically united with Christ’s death. In this union, our sin becomes identified with Christ on the cross, and there we see that sin justly condemned, exposed in all the horror and ugliness attached to stigma the cross brings. In turn, Christ’s righteousness becomes identified with us and, by virtue of being “in Christ,” we become “the righteousness of God.” Given that our entrance into the Christian community, as the body of Christ, provides the ground for this union, we should not view this transaction in purely individualistic terms, as merely an exchange between individual persons and Christ. Rather, it is the union of the Christian community in Christ, where all bear the burdens of one another, that allows the sinful burdens of the whole community to be gathered up together and exposed in a single act of atonement. This stands in sharp contrast to the broken and fragmented community of the world, where refusal to share in the burdens of others ultimately leads to eternal isolation and individual condemnation.

Second, Christ’s atonement also functioned to expose human evil insofar as it publicly exemplified the hidden evils of human society. By vindicating Christ in the resurrection, God exposed the evil of the social/political power structures that led to Jesus’ crucifixion. These evil structures, which had morally legitimized themselves through religious and cultural institutions, inadvertently exposed their true nature, in all of its horrifying evil, by committing the most evil act in human history – by crucifying the Son of God. In this way, these unjust power structures were stripped of their false religious and cultural justifications. In their unjust act of crucifying Jesus, they showed themselves to be opposed to the authentic purposes of God and contrary to the true human community that God, through Jesus, had sought to establish. In this way, by overturning their perceived legitimacy, Jesus disarmed the ability of these structures, empowered by human sinful rationalizations, to bring about the final destruction of the human community. He did this through taking the full brunt of these destructive powers upon himself, thereby exposing them ahead of time.

Given that the punitive wrath of God partially manifests itself in the handing over of humans to the natural consequences of their own sinful rationalizations, by taking the consequences of human injustice upon himself, thereby exposing the rationalizations which sustain it, Jesus took up the punishment that humans would have otherwise received for their injustice. His death exposed human injustice for what it really was before it was too late, and thus diverted the course of humanity from its inevitable path toward destruction. Likewise, the love that Jesus demonstrated in this act and his refusal to fight the unjust social/political structures of humanity on their own terms – through violence and the posturing of corrupt political power, but through the power of self-giving love instead – revealed God’s insurmountable power in what the world considered as weakness and showed forth God’s true intentions for authentic human community. Thus, the cross must never be twisted into a sanction for the abusive power relationships that mark the unjust ways of the world.

In these ways also, Jesus’ penal substitutionary atonement extends beyond mere human individuals because it exposes not only the evils that adhere in individual hearts but also the evils that adhere in the structures of human social/political relationships. Insofar as Jesus’ death exposes the evils of these relational structures, it provides the ground for their redemption as well. Thus, the atoning value of Jesus’ death extends to all areas of human relationships, which, though originally created as good by God, have been corrupted by human sin. It promises to redeem humanity from all of its relational isolations, to the isolation from one another caused by selfishness, injustice and oppression, to the isolation humans experience from their environment in the natural created order, and ultimately to the isolation that humans experience from God. Thus, Jesus’ penal substitutionary death does indeed have social, political, environmental and even cosmic significance.

Does Jesus’ acceptance of human punishment and his bearing the wrath of God then make God out to be a sadist who must inflict pain to receive satisfaction and Jesus out to be the masochist who plays the role of the innocent victim? On the contrary, in the atonement Jesus strives actively with God to expose evil in a way that does not result the in destruction of the human community. In this way both the Father and the Son actively demonstrate the salvific love of God through Jesus’ atoning death. The Father does not function as subject, inflicting pain on Jesus as object, but rather, Jesus’ atoning sacrifice becomes a cooperative joint venture between Father and Son as they both seek to actively confront, expose and overthrow evil so that humanity might be saved from having its evil exposed through its own self condemnation. In the process, Jesus takes the condemnation of humanity, the just punishment it would have received from God, upon himself, but this flows out of Jesus’ active confrontation of evil in his alignment with the purposes and activities of the Father, not from his being the passive recipient of the infliction divine punishment.

In this way, Jesus also serves, not as one who encourages us to remain passive in the face of evil and oppression, but as one who calls us through example to unmask the forces of evil and oppression and to fight for their destruction even at the expense of great personal cost. Sometimes this struggle may even entail our own suffering and death (though, since we have already been crucified with Christ and raised with him, ultimately such does not matter), but we may rest assured, on the basis of the divine love demonstrated on the cross, that God fights and suffers along with us. Though suffering should never be sought as end to itself, God insures that our suffering in the fight against evil never occurs in vain. God takes our unjust suffering, inflicted by a world which opposes all those who do the will of God, and causes it to serve God’s own redemptive purposes by using it to unmask, expose and delegitimize the oppressive forces that led to that suffering. The death and resurrection of Jesus, in turn, remind us both of God’s solidarity with us in our struggle and that God’s decisive battle against evil has already been won.

Thus, we have seen a way to interpret popular penal substitution language in a way that evades the vast majority of Green’s and Baker’s criticism of it. This interpretation does not portray God as capricious, but as one who lovingly seeks to rescue human beings from the consequences of their own self-destructive behavior in a way that does not compromise the truth. It portrays Jesus’ taking upon the punishment that sinful humanity deserved in a way that involves his active confrontation with the forces of evil and not in a way that makes him the passive victim of divine child abuse. Ethically, this interpretation of the penal substitution model avoids legitimizing victimization and encourages the active confrontation and unmasking of oppression. Contextually, this view begins with Western categories of guilt and punishment, but also transcends their individualistic and autobiographical presuppositions. It provides a bridge from a popular way of expressing the meaning of Christ’s atonement in the West to ways of expositing the fuller implications of the atonement for discipleship and social justice.
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God Bless,
Kenny

[seer]

Interesting Ken - do you have the whole paper on line some place?

[Kenny]

Today @ 11:21 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=211952#post211952)
seer:

Interesting Ken - do you have the whole paper on line some place?

Thanks, but no. I wrote it for a class and I don't have my own website

[Kenny]

Yesterday @ 06:32 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=211416#post211416)
Andrew:

That reads nicely, but I don't understand it. :help: If the punishment for our sins involves a judical outpouring of wrath from the Father onto the Son and this satisfies 'the debt', how is there any hindrance in our relationship with God?

The punishment that Jesus endured on the cross for our sake was more than just a private transaction between the members of the Trinity. Part of the means by which Christ’s atonement won the decisive battle against evil was by unmasking evil and publicly exposing it in all of its horror and ugliness. As Colossians 1:17-2:4 puts it, “He disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a public example of them, triumphing over them.” In other words, Christ’s death on the cross functions as a public exhibition of the horrifying nature of evil and also as an exhibition God’s decisive victory over evil through the power of self-giving love in the service of others. This revealatory dimension of the atonement could only have occurred in real time and space and not merely as a private inter-Trinitarian transaction in the heavenlies. See my last long post for an expansion on this idea.

What does, "if Jesus Christ is not truly man, then salvation does not touch our human existence and condition" mean?

Note Hebrews 2:14 - 17 in this regard:

It was fitting that God, for whom and through whom all things exist, in bringing many children to glory, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through sufferings. For the one who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one Father. For this reason Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters, saying, "I will proclaim your name to my brothers and sisters, in the midst of the congregation I will praise you." And again, "I will put my trust in him." And again, "Here am I and the children whom God has given me." Since, therefore, the children share flesh and blood, he himself likewise shared the same things, so that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death. For it is clear that he did not come to help angels, but the descendants of Abraham. Therefore he had to become like his brothers and sisters in every respect, so that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make a sacrifice of atonement for the sins of the people. Because he himself was tested by what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested.

Four prominent means by which Scripture describes us as partaking in the benefits of Christ’s atonement involve Christ’s solidarity with us, our participation in Christ by way of mystical union, representation and exchange. If Christ had not become like us in every respect except without sin, He could not have joined in solidarity with us. If Christ did not join in solidarity with us, we could not have become participants in His work because there would be no grounds for any sort of mystical union between us; Christ and us would have remained in different categories of being. Also, if Christ did not become a human like us, then He could not have served as an appropriate representative of humanity before God. Without our being united to and represented by Christ, there would be no grounds for exchange – that is, there would be no grounds for God to regard Christ as a sinner on our behalf nor would there be any grounds for God to regard us as righteous on Christ’s behalf.

If our sins could be paid in heaven, what difference does it make?

They couldn’t have, for the reasons described above. But, you should also not assume that the atonement exhausts the purpose of the incarnation. Some theologians have speculated that the incarnation was such a surpassing good that it would have occurred even if human beings had never sinned. The incarnation reveals God’s solidarity with and concern for His creation. It also reveals to us the nature of God as expressed in human form as well as God’s ultimate intentions for true humanity. And, because Christ, as God, identified himself with creation, the incarnation serves to lift up creation towards God (though not through any sort of compromising of the Creator/creature distinction) in way that could not have been otherwise.

In Christ,
Kenny

[Kenny]

Yesterday @ 02:21 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=211311#post211311)
Andrew:

Surely God isn't bound by the mentality of ancient peoples, though.

No, but nor is He bound by the mentalities of post-enlightenment Western thinking either. Modernism has tended to arrogantly assume that contemporary Western thinking exemplifies the peak of rationality whereas the ancients were simply full of superstition brought on by scientific ignorance. Postmodernism has been right to challenge this sort of cultural arrogance on our part (though it goes too far in the direction of cultural relativism). We need to be open to the fact that the ancients were aware of aspects of reality that we tend not to see and that they may have perceived certain things more accurately than we do.

Our modern atomistic individualism as contrasted with the communalism of most ancient (and contemporary non-Western) societies is one of those areas where the ancients were probably more perceptive concerning the true nature of humanity and the cosmos than we are. And, low and behold, modern advances in social studies, psychology, even physics, are bearing the ancients out in this regard.

Furthermore, our notions of atomistic individualism are foreign to the minds of the Biblical writers and the presuppositions which inform much of the Biblical text. In fact, I would go as far to say that such individualistic notions are contrary to a Biblically informed worldview.

In Christ,
Kenny

[Tercel]

Hi Andrew,

I was going to write a reply to some of the stuff said here, but then I realised that would just be repeating what I've already written on these forums. I suggest you read these two threads for some previous discussion on this subject:
Theories of the Atonement (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&forumid=14&threadid=9586)
Why Poor, Starving Africans Go to Hell (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=5977)

[Andrew]

Thanks, Kenny... I'll read it again and try and digest it. :smile: Would you have a crack at this for me, please?
http://theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=2130

I'd also be interested to hear what you have to say (in that linked thread) about the hypostatic union between the divine and human in Jesus at His death. If Biblical death is separation, what is the nature of the divine/human union in Jesus at His death?