More Problems with Penal Substitution

[FormerFundy]

As I mentioned in another thread (http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/sh...d.php?t=132619, I have been reading Pierced for Our Transgressions: Redisovering the Glory of Penal Substitution . It is one of the few full length books written in defense of this core evangelical doctrine.

My main problem with the view, as expressed in the other thread, is that PST does not consitute justice. It is a miscarriage of justice to punish an innocent person in place of a guilty one.

However, there are some other problems with PST as well.

For example, on pages 263-265 in the book Pierced , the authors deal with the objection: Penal Substitution implicity denies that God forgives Sin . IOW, true forgiveness does not require payment or punishment. If the penalty for man's sin is extracted from Jesus Christ, then it is not forgiven, its paid for by Christ. If, I owe someone a $1M and my friend pays that debt for me, the debt is not forgiven, its paid. If the person I owe the money to forgives me the debt, then no one has to pay it.

The author's response to this objection is: The reason why Penal Substitution does not deny that God forgives sin is precisely because it is God himself , in the person of his Son, who pays the debt we owe. (p. 264).

I fail to see how that resolves the problem. No matter who pays it, it is paid and not forgiven.

I think the concept of true forgiveness is seen in Luke 7:36-50, where Jesus forgives the woman who washed his feet with her hair and tears. He illustrates true forgiveness in verses 41-42 when he says: There was a certain creditor which had two debtors: the one owed five hundred pence, and the other fifty. And when they had nothing to pay, he frankly forgave them both. Tell me therefore, which of them will love him most?

The creditor forgave the debt without requiring any payment. Jesus seems to indicate that his forgiveness of the sinner woman in this passage is along the same lines.

[Seasanctuary]

When I read the Quran, I saw forgiveness from God without anyone paying for it and was struck by a similar realization as the OP's about Christian doctrine.

2:284 (Asad) Unto God belongs all that is in the heavens and all that is on earth. And whether you bring into the open what is in your minds or conceal it, God will call you to account for it; and then He will forgive whom He wills, and will chastise whom He wills: for God has the power to will anything.

The only thing God in the Quran asks is that people repent.

11:90 (Asad) Hence, ask your Sustainer to forgive you your sins, and then turn towards Him in repentance - for, verily, my Sustainer is a dispenser of grace, a fount of love!"

I've seen Christians misrepresent the Quran as teaching a "religion of works" because some of its verses mention good deeds. But the Bible also has verses like that. Christians usually harmonize the situation by saying the good deeds are a result -- a sign -- of salvation, not a precondition. Muslims can easily do the same.

33:71 (Asad) [whereupon] He will cause your deeds to be virtuous, and will forgive you your sins.

I've heard the story that C.S. Lewis identified grace as the defining characteristic of Christianity. But so far as I can tell, the religion taught in the Quran is about grace with true forgiveness. Not transference of punishment.

[seanD]

God had a covenant, the covenant had a stipulation for those who broke the initial covenant -- a life in place of another, and this is the covenant he followed. Our penal code does not have this stipulation, thus we are brought up under a totally different ideology. Forget about our own penal code or what we view as justice. It's apples and oranges.

The creditor forgave the debt without requiring any payment. Jesus seems to indicate that his forgiveness of the sinner woman in this passage is along the same lines.

There was someone who made the analogy of grace prior to the crucifixion and resurrection being similar to a credit line that was built up, until the debt was actually paid in full. I think you're trying to figure out exactly how this was spiritually possible, which is a legit inquiry, and not an easy answer. Just don't confuse the issues.

[Joveia]

If there's a thief in a town who constantly steals from the people in that town, then the town can be nice and forgive him, but it won't deal with the fact that the thief constantly steals. The same principle applies to all religious people as the thief, because no one 'backs up' their saying sorry to God and other people with perfect actions. Nor can we. So God's forgiveness can't deal with the real issue with sin, which is that people sin. Christ's death was necessary so that we could hand in our personality in the areas where we sin for Christ's.

[theil]

As I mentioned in another thread (http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/sh...d.php?t=132619, I have been reading Pierced for Our Transgressions: Redisovering the Glory of Penal Substitution . It is one of the few full length books written in defense of this core evangelical doctrine.

My main problem with the view, as expressed in the other thread, is that PST does not consitute justice. It is a miscarriage of justice to punish an innocent person in place of a guilty one.

However, there are some other problems with PST as well.

For example, on pages 263-265 in the book Pierced , the authors deal with the objection: Penal Substitution implicity denies that God forgives Sin . IOW, true forgiveness does not require payment or punishment. If the penalty for man's sin is extracted from Jesus Christ, then it is not forgiven, its paid for by Christ. If, I owe someone a $1M and my friend pays that debt for me, the debt is not forgiven, its paid. If the person I owe the money to forgives me the debt, then no one has to pay it.

The author's response to this objection is: The reason why Penal Substitution does not deny that God forgives sin is precisely because it is God himself , in the person of his Son, who pays the debt we owe. (p. 264).

I fail to see how that resolves the problem. No matter who pays it, it is paid and not forgiven.

I think the concept of true forgiveness is seen in Luke 7:36-50, where Jesus forgives the woman who washed his feet with her hair and tears. He illustrates true forgiveness in verses 41-42 when he says: There was a certain creditor which had two debtors: the one owed five hundred pence, and the other fifty. And when they had nothing to pay, he frankly forgave them both. Tell me therefore, which of them will love him most?

The creditor forgave the debt without requiring any payment. Jesus seems to indicate that his forgiveness of the sinner woman in this passage is along the same lines.

What a great subject, FormerFundy! Insofar as I can tell, your question is largely about the doctrine of Imputation. The word "impute" means to ascribe antecedently to someone something they did not possess or have prior. Although this particular doctrine happens to be multifaceted, I will focus on only two of its aspects. First, let’s separate forgiveness from justice for a moment.

God must punish evil acts for the sake of His righteous character which bespeaks of His goodness. If God did not obligate the punishment of those who are guilty of sin, it would violate is own essence of goodness. Imagine a sentence hearing in a case of child abuse, murder, rape, etc., whereby the judge says to the convicted person, “You are free to go. No punishment of any kind is required of you.” Moreover, what if this judge always acted this way in each case no matter how heinous the crime such as a serial killer who has tortured, raped, and murdered several victims? What would you think of such a judge? People surely would be morally outraged! Now, imagine God were to judge this way. What would you think of such a God? Certainly the words treacherous, deceitful, unfaithful, double-crossing, untrustworthy, immoral, among many others, come to mind. It is not difficult to see that justice is paramount to our sensibilities, our well-being, our way of life, for the past, present and future.

Not only does God require that those who break His law be punished, but He also demands that His law be lived perfectly while here on Earth [Matt. 5:48]. Due to our uncontrollable sinful circumstances, however, we are unable to rightly obey the ordinance of God in our thoughts, words and actions. We cannot abide daily by His law flawlessly and obtain eternal life with God who is Holy (set apart). As a result, God promises His wrath on those who fail to keep His law [Deut. 27:26; Gal. 3:10].

Forgiveness is what the Gospel of Christ is all about. All have broken the law of God; I have, you have. Consequently we incur a debt that we cannot pay. (There is also the imputation of Adam’s sin to all of humanity. But that is a topic for another day.) The good news is that God imputed all our sins, past, present and future to Christ, who did not sin. That is, our sins were accounted or ascribed to Christ who paid, in full, our debt in his suffering and death on the cross. Christ takes our place in paying the penalty. Christ lived the human life of perfect obedience, the faultless human life God obliges each of us while on Earth, the life that we ourselves, in our rebelliousness, find impossible to live. Here is where the second, important aspect of imputation comes into play. In this manner, that is, through the life, suffering, and death of Christ on the cross, God imputed the righteousness of Christ to His people (believers) so that judicially, once again, we can be counted innocent before Him, and, thereby, escape His wrath. In short, our debt has been canceled or forgiven.

I do not believe any verse in the Bible captures God’s loving act of imputation better than Jn. 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

Best Regards,

--Terry

[papas]

As I mentioned in another thread (http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/sh...d.php?t=132619, I have been reading Pierced for Our Transgressions: Redisovering the Glory of Penal Substitution . It is one of the few full length books written in defense of this core evangelical doctrine.

My main problem with the view, as expressed in the other thread, is that PST does not consitute justice. It is a miscarriage of justice to punish an innocent person in place of a guilty one.

However, there are some other problems with PST as well.

For example, on pages 263-265 in the book Pierced , the authors deal with the objection: Penal Substitution implicity denies that God forgives Sin . IOW, true forgiveness does not require payment or punishment. If the penalty for man's sin is extracted from Jesus Christ, then it is not forgiven, its paid for by Christ. If, I owe someone a $1M and my friend pays that debt for me, the debt is not forgiven, its paid. If the person I owe the money to forgives me the debt, then no one has to pay it.

The author's response to this objection is: The reason why Penal Substitution does not deny that God forgives sin is precisely because it is God himself , in the person of his Son, who pays the debt we owe. (p. 264).

I fail to see how that resolves the problem. No matter who pays it, it is paid and not forgiven.

I think the concept of true forgiveness is seen in Luke 7:36-50, where Jesus forgives the woman who washed his feet with her hair and tears. He illustrates true forgiveness in verses 41-42 when he says: There was a certain creditor which had two debtors: the one owed five hundred pence, and the other fifty. And when they had nothing to pay, he frankly forgave them both. Tell me therefore, which of them will love him most?

The creditor forgave the debt without requiring any payment. Jesus seems to indicate that his forgiveness of the sinner woman in this passage is along the same lines.

The problem is that you are confusing human justice with divine. With respect to divine justice, it was not unjust.

Your second objection neglects the symbollic meaning of forgiveness which doesn't need to be carried out to some absolute definition: simply put it is God's free gift, Christ's death, which allows for His forgiveness of sins, and this gift was not achieved by anyone, and it is forgiveness of sins in the sense that the sins are washed away, regardless of being paid for, in technical terms, by Christ's death.

[FormerFundy]

What a great subject, FormerFundy! Insofar as I can tell, your question is largely about the doctrine of Imputation. The word "impute" means to ascribe antecedently to someone something they did not possess or have prior. Although this particular doctrine happens to be multifaceted, I will focus on only two of its aspects. First, let’s separate forgiveness from justice for a moment.

God must punish evil acts for the sake of His righteous character which bespeaks of His goodness. If God did not obligate the punishment of those who are guilty of sin, it would violate is own essence of goodness. Imagine a sentence hearing in a case of child abuse, murder, rape, etc., whereby the judge says to the convicted person, “You are free to go. No punishment of any kind is required of you.” Moreover, what if this judge always acted this way in each case no matter how heinous the crime such as a serial killer who has tortured, raped, and murdered several victims? What would you think of such a judge? People surely would be morally outraged! Now, imagine God were to judge this way. What would you think of such a God? Certainly the words treacherous, deceitful, unfaithful, double-crossing, untrustworthy, immoral, among many others, come to mind. It is not difficult to see that justice is paramount to our sensibilities, our well-being, our way of life, for the past, present and future.

Not only does God require that those who break His law be punished, but He also demands that His law be lived perfectly while here on Earth [Matt. 5:48]. Due to our uncontrollable sinful circumstances, however, we are unable to rightly obey the ordinance of God in our thoughts, words and actions. We cannot abide daily by His law flawlessly and obtain eternal life with God who is Holy (set apart). As a result, God promises His wrath on those who fail to keep His law [Deut. 27:26; Gal. 3:10].

Forgiveness is what the Gospel of Christ is all about. All have broken the law of God; I have, you have. Consequently we incur a debt that we cannot pay. (There is also the imputation of Adam’s sin to all of humanity. But that is a topic for another day.) The good news is that God imputed all our sins, past, present and future to Christ, who did not sin. That is, our sins were accounted or ascribed to Christ who paid, in full, our debt in his suffering and death on the cross. Christ takes our place in paying the penalty. Christ lived the human life of perfect obedience, the faultless human life God obliges each of us while on Earth, the life that we ourselves, in our rebelliousness, find impossible to live. Here is where the second, important aspect of imputation comes into play. In this manner, that is, through the life, suffering, and death of Christ on the cross, God imputed the righteousness of Christ to His people (believers) so that judicially, once again, we can be counted innocent before Him, and, thereby, escape His wrath. In short, our debt has been canceled or forgiven.

Best Regards,

--Terry

Terry, I understand exactly what you are saying. This is precisely what I taught as an evangelical theologian for 10 years. There is still one problem, however.

You say in your last line: In short, our debt has been canceled or forgiven. .

But it has not been cancelled or forgiven, its been paid by someone else. To cancel or forgive is "to release or let go without payment." If someone else pays a debt you owe to me. I am not forgiving your debt, I am simply accepting the payment from someone else. That is not forgiveness in the true sense of the word.

For example, look at th is portion of the "Lord's Prayer" in Matthew 6:12-15:

And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.
For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you:
But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

So now when we forgive those who trespass against us, are we doing so without requiring payment in full from them for their trespass? Yes, otherwise its not really forgiveness.

[Metacrock]

As I mentioned in another thread (http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/sh...d.php?t=132619, I have been reading Pierced for Our Transgressions: Redisovering the Glory of Penal Substitution . It is one of the few full length books written in defense of this core evangelical doctrine.

My main problem with the view, as expressed in the other thread, is that PST does not consitute justice. It is a miscarriage of justice to punish an innocent person in place of a guilty one.

However, there are some other problems with PST as well.

For example, on pages 263-265 in the book Pierced , the authors deal with the objection: Penal Substitution implicity denies that God forgives Sin . IOW, true forgiveness does not require payment or punishment. If the penalty for man's sin is extracted from Jesus Christ, then it is not forgiven, its paid for by Christ. If, I owe someone a $1M and my friend pays that debt for me, the debt is not forgiven, its paid. If the person I owe the money to forgives me the debt, then no one has to pay it.

The author's response to this objection is: The reason why Penal Substitution does not deny that God forgives sin is precisely because it is God himself , in the person of his Son, who pays the debt we owe. (p. 264).

I fail to see how that resolves the problem. No matter who pays it, it is paid and not forgiven.

I think the concept of true forgiveness is seen in Luke 7:36-50, where Jesus forgives the woman who washed his feet with her hair and tears. He illustrates true forgiveness in verses 41-42 when he says: There was a certain creditor which had two debtors: the one owed five hundred pence, and the other fifty. And when they had nothing to pay, he frankly forgave them both. Tell me therefore, which of them will love him most?

The creditor forgave the debt without requiring any payment. Jesus seems to indicate that his forgiveness of the sinner woman in this passage is along the same lines.

But you are not willing to face the fact that there are other models. If you don't accept Penal substitution which is really called "substitutinoary atonement" then accept participatory atonement.

Until you deal with all the other models you haven made a point.

[Metacrock]

this is the participatory view. you have to deal with this view or you have not succeeded in attacking the Christian view of Atonement.

this was written by me and quoted from my website.


I.The Atonement: God's Solidarity With Humanity.

A. The inadquacy of Financial Transactions

Many ministers, and therefore, many Christians speak of and think of Jesus' death on the cross as analogus to a finacial transaction. Usually this idea goes something like this: we are in hock to the devil because we sinned. God pays the debt we owe by sending Jesus to die for us, and that pays off the devil. The problem with this view is the Bible never says we owe the devil anything. We owe God. The financial transaction model is inadqueate. Matters of the soul are much more important than any monitary arrangement and buiness transactions and banking do not do justice to the import of the issue. Moreover, there is a more sophisticated model; that of the sacrafice for sin. In this model Jesus is like a sacraficial lamb who is murdered in our place. This model is also inadequate because it is based on a primative notion of sacrafice. The one making the sacrafice pays over something valuable to him to apease an angry God. In this case God is paying himself. This view is also called the "propitiatior view" becuase it is based upon propitation, which means to turn away wrath. The more meaningful notion is that of Solidarity. The Solidarity or "participatry" view says that Jesus entered human history to participate in our lot as finiate humans, and he dide as a means of identifying with us. We are under the law of sin and death, we are under curse of the law (we sin, we die, we are not capable in our own human strength of being good enough to merit salvation). IN taking on the penalty of sin (while remaining sinless) Jesus died in our stead; not inthe mannar of a premative animal sacrafice (that is just a metaphor) but as one of us, so that through identification with us, we might identify with him and therefore, partake of his newness of life.

B. Christ the Perfect Revelation of God to Humanity

In the book of Hebrews it says "in former times God spoke in many and verious ways through the prophets, but in these latter times he has spoken more perfectly through his son." Jesus is the perfect revelation of God to humanity. The prophets were speaking for God, but their words were limited in how much they could tell us about God. Jesus was God in the flesh and as such, we can see clearly by his charactor, his actions, and his teachings what God wants of us and how much God cares about us. God is for humanity, God is on our side! The greatest sign of God's support of our cuase as needy humans is Jesus death on the cross, a death in solidarity with us as victims of our own sinful hearts and socieities. Thus we can see the lengths God is will to go to to point us toward himself. There are many verses in the Bible that seem to contradict this view. These are the verses which seem to say that Atonement is preipiatory.

C. Death in Solidarity with Victims

1) Support from Modern Theologians

Three Major Modern Theologians support the solidarity notion of atonement: Jurgen Moltmann (The Crucified God), Matthew L. Lamb (Solidarity With Victims), and D.E.H. Whiteley (The Theology of St. Paul).In the 1980s Moltmann (German Calvinist) was called the greatest living protestant theologian, and made his name in laying the groundwork for what became liberation theology. Lamb (Catholic Priest) was big name in political theology, and Whiteley (scholar at Oxford) was a major Pauline scholar in the 1960s.In his work The Crcified God Moltmann interprits the cry of Jesus on the cross, "my God my God why have you forsaken me" as a statement of solidarity, placing him in identification with all who feel abandoned by God.Whiteley: "If St. Paul can be said to hold a theory of the modus operandi [of the atonement] it is best described as one of salvation through participation [the 'solidarity' view]: Christ shared all of our experience, sin alone excepted, including death in order that we, by virtue of our solidarity with him, might share his life...Paul does not hold a theory of substitution..." (The Theology of St. Paul, 130)An example of one of the great classical theologians of the early chruch who held to a similar view is St. Irenaeus (according to Whiteley, 133).

2) Scrtiptural

...all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were Baptized into his death.? We were therefore burried with him in baptism into death in order that just as Christ was raised from the death through the glory of the father, we too may live a new life. If we have been united with him in his death we will certanly be united with him in his resurrection.For we know that the old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be rendered powerless, that we should no longer be slaves to sin.--because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.Now if we have died with Christ we believe that we will also live with him, for we know that since Christ was raised from the dead he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him; the death he died to sin he died once for all; but the life he lives he lives to God. In the same way count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Chrsit Jesus.(Romans 6:1-5)


In Short, if we have united ouselves to Chrsit, entered his death and been raised to life, we participate in his death and ressurection thourgh our act of solidairty, united with Christ in his death, than it stands tto reason that his death is an act of solidarity with us, that he expresses his solidarity with humanity in his death.

This is why Jesus cries out on the cross "why have you forsaken me?" According to Moltmann this is an expression of Solidarity with all who feel abandoned by God.Jesus death in solidarity creates the grounds for forgiveness, since it is through his death that we express our solidarity, and through that, share in his life in union with Christ. Many verses seem to suggest a propitiatory view. But these are actually speaking of the affects of the solidarity. "Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath thorugh him! For if when we were considered God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! What appears to be saying that the shedding of blood is what creates forgiveness is actually saying that the death in solidarity cretaes the grounds for reconciliation. IT says we were enemies then we were reconciled to him thorugh the death, his expression of solidarity changes the ground, when we express our solidarity and enter into the death we are giving up to God, we move from enemy to friend, and in that sense the shedding of blood, the death in solidarity, creates the conditions through which we can be and are forgiven. He goes on to talk about sharing in his life, which is participation, solidarity, unity.

D. Meaning of Solidarity and Salvation.

Jurgen Moltmann's notion of Solidarity (see The Crucified God) is based upon the notion of Political solidarity. Chrsit died in Solidarity wiht victims. He took upon himself a political death by purposly angering the powers of the day. Thus in his death he identifies with victims of oppression. But we are all vitims of oppression. Sin has a social dimension, the injustice we experience as the hands of society and social and governmental institutions is primarily and at a very basic level the result of the social aspects of sin. Power, and political machinations begin in the sinful heart, the ego, the desire for power, and they manifest themselves through institutions built by the will to power over the other. But in a more fundamental sense we are all victims of our own sinful natures. We scheme against others on some level to build ourselve up and secure our condiitions in life. IN this sense we cannot help but do injustice to others. In return injustice is done to us.Jesus died in solidarity with us, he underwent the ultiamte consquences of living in a sinful world, in order to demonstrate the depths of God's love and God's desire to save us. Take an analogy from political organizing. IN Central America governments often send "death squads" to murder labor unionists and political dissenter. IN Guartemala there were some American organizations which organized for college students to go to Guatemala and escourt the leaders of dissenting groups so that they would not be murdered.

The logic was that the death squads wouldn't hurt an American Student because it would bring bad press and shut off U.S. govenment funds to their military. As disturbing as these political implications are, let's stay focussed on the Gospel. Jesus is like those students, and like some of them, he was actually killed. But unlike them he went out of his way to be killed, to be victimized by the the rage of the sinful and power seeking so that he could illustrate to us the desire of God; that God is on our side, God is on the side of the poor, the vitimized, the marginalized, and the lost. Jesus said "a physician is not sent to the well but to the sick."The key to salvation is to accept God's statement of solidarity, to express our solidarity with God by placing ourselves into the death of Christ (by identification with it, by trust in it's efficacy for our salvation).

E. Atonement is a Primetive Concept?

This charge is made quite often by internet-skeptics, espeically Jewish anti-missionaries who confuse the concept wtih the notion of Human sacrifice. But the charge rests on the idea that sacrafice itself is a premative notion. If one committs a crime, someone else should not pay for it. This attack can be put forward in many forms but the basic notion revolves around the idea that one person dying for the sins of another, taking the penalty or sacrificing to remove the guilt of another is a premative concept. None of this applies with the Participatory view of the atonement (solidarity) since the workings of Christ's death, the mannar in which it secures salavtion, is neither through turning away of wrath nor taking upon himself other's sins, but the creation of the grounds through which one declairs one's own solidarity with God and the grounds through which God accepts that solidairty and extends his own; the identification of God himself with the needs and crys of his own creation.

F. Unfair to Jesus as God's Son?

Internet skeptics sometimes argue that God can't be trusted if he would sacrafice his son. This is so silly and such a misunderstanding of Christian doctirne and the nature of religious belief that it hardly deserves an answer. Obviously God is three persons in one essence, the Trinity , Trinune Godhead. Clearly God's act of solidarity was made with the unanimity of a single Godhead. God is not three God's, and is always in concert with himself.

[Dee Dee Warren]

Terry, I understand exactly what you are saying. This is precisely what I taught as an evangelical theologian for 10 years. There is still one problem, however.

You say in your last line: In short, our debt has been canceled or forgiven. .

But it has not been cancelled or forgiven, its been paid by someone else. To cancel or forgive is "to release or let go without payment." If someone else pays a debt you owe to me. I am not forgiving your debt, I am simply accepting the payment from someone else. That is not forgiveness in the true sense of the word.

For example, look at th is portion of the "Lord's Prayer" in Matthew 6:12-15:

And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.
For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you:
But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

So now when we forgive those who trespass against us, are we doing so without requiring payment in full from them for their trespass? Yes, otherwise its not really forgiveness.

Someone always pays, you are being very wooden. If you owe me $10 and I tell you the debt is forgiven, I have paid myself by deciding I shall be poorer by $10 by not requiring it of you.

There is no such thing as a free lunch. Someone always pays. God Himself paid it so it is forgiven in exactly the same way all things all forgiven.

[FormerFundy]

Someone always pays, you are being very wooden. If you owe me $10 and I tell you the debt is forgiven, I have paid myself by deciding I shall be poorer by $10 by not requiring it of you.

There is no such thing as a free lunch. Someone always pays. God Himself paid it so it is forgiven in exactly the same way all things all forgiven.

I don't think I am being "wooden." A person to whom a debt is owed cannot wipe it out by "repaying" it himself. If you lend me $10 you have in your purse and I fail to repay it and then you go get another $10 from the ATM and replenishes the cash in your purse, you have not repaid my debt at all but you have just simply moved the money around and I still owe you $10. You are not forgiving me because you have another $10 in your account, you are forgiving me the debt because either I can't pay or I don't want to pay.

On the other hand, if my friend pays the $10 back to you on my behalf, there is nothing for you to forgive but I am still in debt—this time to my friend. The only way you could truly forgive my debt is by allowing it to remain unpaid.

[FormerFundy]

this is the participatory view. you have to deal with this view or you have not succeeded in attacking the Christian view of Atonement.

I am focused on one particular view of the atonement, namely Penal Subsitution. This is a central core doctrine of evangelical Christianity.
I was an evangelical for over 20 years and this is what I know best.

Your view would have to be the topic of another thread.

[Metacrock]

I am focused on one particular view of the atonement, namely Penal Subsitution. This is a central core doctrine of evangelical Christianity.
I was an evangelical for over 20 years and this is what I know best.

Your view would have to be the topic of another thread.

But it's not the only one.

[seanD]

I don't think I am being "wooden." A person to whom a debt is owed cannot wipe it out by "repaying" it himself. If you lend me $10 you have in your purse and I fail to repay it and then you go get another $10 from the ATM and replenishes the cash in your purse, you have not repaid my debt at all but you have just simply moved the money around and I still owe you $10. You are not forgiving me because you have another $10 in your account, you are forgiving me the debt because either I can't pay or I don't want to pay.

On the other hand, if my friend pays the $10 back to you on my behalf, there is nothing for you to forgive but I am still in debt—this time to my friend. The only way you could truly forgive my debt is by allowing it to remain unpaid.

If you and I have a contract stating that if you cannot pay back the debt a third party will step in and cover the debt, then this is legally binding even in our system.

If you're trying to understand the spiritual aspect of this, then this is basically how the theology goes: The person is saved by faith in Christ. God then at that moment places another life (this is often identified in many various ways as Christ himself, a power, a substance, a remnant of God himself, the "new man," the Spirit, etc.) within that person. This substance is an essential process of salvation because this is what becomes apart of us and what sustains us in the eternal afterlife when we are resurrected in the last days. So when God looks at that person, he no longer sees the sinner, he sees that new life which represents Christ. Basically he sees billions of duplicated Christs, or duplicated sons of God (Romans 8:14). As that Spirit, power, substance, et al., is nurtured -- via prayer, faith, scripture reading, fellowship, etc. -- the nature becomes more and more dominant, and the person becomes more in tuned to God, and sins less and less (but never ever stops sinning completely until they fully become new beings with new bodies when they die and are resurrected in the last days).

[FormerFundy]

Someone always pays, you are being very wooden. If you owe me $10 and I tell you the debt is forgiven, I have paid myself by deciding I shall be poorer by $10 by not requiring it of you.

There is no such thing as a free lunch. Someone always pays. God Himself paid it so it is forgiven in exactly the same way all things all forgiven.

My first answer:

I don't think I am being "wooden." A person to whom a debt is owed cannot wipe it out by "repaying" it himself. If you lend me $10 you have in your purse and I fail to repay it and then you go get another $10 from the ATM and replenishes the cash in your purse, you have not repaid my debt at all but you have just simply moved the money around and I still owe you $10. You are not forgiving me because you have another $10 in your account, you are forgiving me the debt because either I can't pay or I don't want to pay.

On the other hand, if my friend pays the $10 back to you on my behalf, there is nothing for you to forgive but I am still in debt—this time to my friend. The only way you could truly forgive my debt is by allowing it to remain unpaid.

While I think that analogy is accurate, let me try another one.

Lets say that I slap your face. You can forgive me without extracting anything from me or you can repay me by slapping my face. If you choose to slap my face, you are not forgiving me, you are extracting justice.