Featured Debates among penal substitution advocates

Not all perspectives on penal substitution are the same. Penal substitution advocates have disagreements within themselves, mainly on 2 main points: (1) To what degree did Jesus actually become sinful, or become a sinner on the cross? and (2) Was the Father really angry or wrathful towards the Son, and how directly and personally was the Father punishing the Son? The below quotations demonstrate the variances on these two issues within the penal substitution camp.

(1) In what sense did Jesus become sinful or guilty?

It is important to understand that according to penal substitution, the sins and guilt of humanity are imputed, or transferred, to Jesus on the cross such that he actually becomes, in some sense, a sinner. There is a range of views on this point within penal substitution theory. Some penal substitution defenders take a more limited view, emphasizing that Jesus was innocent himself, but allowed the guilt of humanity to be legally imputed to him, bearing our guilt in a sort of “external” way. Pierced for our Transgressions says that “although Christ was sinless in himself, he was reckoned by God as being guilty of our sins, and punished for this reason.” Other penal substitution advocates like Bruce McCormack take a stronger view, arguing that “Christ is in his death the sinner. Not merely the bearer of the guilt of others, though he is certainly that too, but the sinner.” (emphasis his) The ultimate, only sinner. When God looks upon Jesus, he sees every sinner with all their sins summed up in one man.

We can see Martin Luther (whose atonement theology I have to admit I find to be quite inconsistent) describing the imputation of our sin to Christ in his commentary on the Galatians:

All the prophets of old said that Christ should be the greatest transgressor, murderer, adulterer, thief, blasphemer that ever was or ever could be on earth.

When He took the sins of the whole world upon Himself, Christ was no longer an innocent person. He was a sinner burdened with the sins of a Paul who was a blasphemer; burdened with the sins of a Peter who denied Christ; burdened with the sins of a David who committed adultery and murder, and gave the heathen occasion to laugh at the Lord. In short, Christ was charged with the sins of all men, that He should pay for them with His own blood. The curse struck Him. The Law found Him among sinners. He was not only in the company of sinners. He had gone so far as to invest Himself with the flesh and blood of sinners. So the Law judged and hanged Him for a sinner.

In separating Christ from us sinners and holding Him up as a holy exemplar, errorists rob us of our best comfort. They misrepresent Him as a threatening tyrant who is ready to slaughter us at the slightest provocation.

I am told that it is preposterous and wicked to call the Son of God a cursed sinner. I answer: If you deny that He is a condemned sinner, you are forced to deny that Christ died. It is not less preposterous to say, the Son of God died, than to say, the Son of God was a sinner.

John the Baptist called Him "the lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world." Being the unspotted Lamb of God, Christ was personally innocent. But because He took the sins of the world His sinlessness was defiled with the sinfulness of the world. Whatever sins I, you, all of us have committed or shall commit, they are Christ's sins as if He had committed them Himself. Our sins have to be Christ's sins or we shall perish forever.

Luther strongly insists that our sins were Christ’s as though he committed them himself. He goes on to say that if Christ is sinless, then he is absolutely worthless to us. To be fair to Luther, he does not always preach the cross this way. Luther is not consistent in his atonement preaching. But the depiction of a sinful Christ could not be stronger here.

Televangelist Benny Hinn actually says that Christ “became the nature of Satan”:

“He [Jesus] who is righteous by choice said, ‘The only way I can stop sin is by me becoming it. I can’t just stop it by letting it touch me; I and it must become one.’ Hear this! He who is the nature of God became the nature of Satan when he became sin!”

And prosperity-preacher Kenneth Copeland agrees that Christ “accepted the nature of Satan”:

“The righteousness of God was made to be sin. He accepted the sin nature of Satan in His own spirit. And at the moment that He did so, He cried, ‘My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?’

(2) How angry was the Father with the Son?

There are also softer and stronger views within penal substitution theory on God’s attitude towards Jesus while he is undergoing punishment, in which stronger views will affirm that God actually hated Jesus while he was on the cross, while softer views will maintain that God had no animosity towards the Son. This quotation from John Calvin represents the softer view:

Yet we do not suggest that God was ever inimical or angry toward him. How could he be angry toward his beloved Son, “in whom his heart reposed” [cf. Matthew 3:17]? How could Christ by his intercession appease the Father toward others, if he were himself hateful to God? This is what we are saying: he bore the weight of divine severity, since he was “stricken and afflicted” [cf. Isaiah 53:5] by God’s hand, and experienced all the signs of a wrathful and avenging God.

Calvin says that God was never personally angry with Jesus, but Jesus only suffered the “weight” and “signs” of a wrathful God. Others holding a softer view affirm that Jesus “suffered our punishment in our place” but would reject the statement “God punished Jesus.” Thomas Aquinas said that Jesus’ “paid our debt of punishment” which could also be said to represent a softer view. On the other hand, some have argued that God actually hated Jesus while punishing Him on the cross. Such views have been recently labeled as Christus Odium, that Christ on the cross becomes odious to the Father. See this quotation from pastor David Platt:

The beauty of the cross is that when Jesus went to Calvary, He did not just pay the price for our lusting, our lying, our cheating, or whatever sin that we do—He stood in our place. He took the holy hatred, holy judgment, and holy wrath of God that was not just due our sin but due us. Jesus stood in our place and He took it upon Himself. So let us be very careful not to lean on comfortable clichés that sound good to us and rob the cross of its power.

Christian therapist Dan Allender and theologian Tremper Longman say the following:

God chose to violate His Son in our place. The Son stared into the mocking eyes of God; He heard the laughter of the Father’s derision and felt Him depart in disgust. . . . In a mysterious instant, the Father who loved the Son from all eternity turned from Him in hatred. The Son became odious to the Father.

Such formulations have also existed in Catholic theology and preaching. Bishop Bossuet (1627-1704) says the following:

The man, Jesus Christ, has been thrown under the multiple and redoubled blows of divine vengeance . . . As it vented itself, so his [God’s] anger diminished; he struck his innocent Son as he wrestled with the wrath of God . . . When an avenging God waged war upon his Son, the mystery of our peace was accomplished.

Bossuet even says of the Virgin Mary, “She dreams not of asking the Eternal Father to lessen her anguish by one single throb, when she beholds him pouring out the full vials of his wrath on the head of his Only-begotten.

Pastor Tim Keller said that on the cross, Jesus “lost the infinite love of the Father.”

If you see Jesus losing the infinite love of the Father out of His infinite love for you, it will infinitely melt your hardness.

Whether the soft or strong views are taken, both on Jesus’ status as a sinner or on God’s attitude towards him on the cross, the logic is clear in all forms of penal substitution that Jesus’ death is just, that is deserved. Penal substitution defender Donald Macleod says, “Christ’s death, despite its dark, horrific backdrop, was just, because it was the death of the voluntary, divine sin-bearer, whose sacrifice satisfied God that it was right for him to forgive the sins of the world.” He says again that at the cross the “penalty was right” and that “it could only be right if it was deserved.” The Catholic poet Dante states in his Paradiso that the cross was God’s “just vengeance” upon human sin, and “Thus was the doom inflicted by the Cross, if measured by the nature so assumed, the most just penalty that ever was.” According to Dante, Jesus on the Cross assumes a fallen, sinful human nature, and suffers the most just penalty that ever was. The writers of Pierced for our Transgressions state that, “God acted justly in punishing him, for he saw him as guilty by virtue of his union with those whose sins he bore” and “Jesus is justly condemned by God for sins imputed to him.” Thus, it is clear that according to penal substitution, Jesus’ death was just. The reason why Jesus died was to satisfy God’s justice, specifically the penal or retributive demands of his justice. This is what it means for Jesus to “satisfy the wrath of God” according to penal substitution.

 

Haha if you don't care, then why even post a response at all?

I don't care about age of the earth debates, which is why I don't post on their forums or even read their posts.

But thank you for your incredibly thoughtful contribution to the discussion.

 

Did you read the post? This is about differing views within the penal substitution camp. This is a post that could be written by someone who believes in penal substitution.

What I have seen in these forums are people who don't really understand what penal substitution actually is, but who say they believe it, so I thought it would be helpful to give a breakdown on what penal substitution is, as well as the variances that exist within the theory.

This is not a "this is why penal substitution is wrong" post, unless in reading the quotations given, a person finds themselves saying "I really don't agree with that and don't think it is biblical."

 

again, this is not a “here’s why penal substitution is false” post.

penal substitution has a specific definition: Jesus dies in our place to satisfy the retributive demands of justice so we would not have to.

I don’t like models or theories language, so I avoid labels. But you could say I bring an emphasis on restitution to my description of the atoning work of Christ.

Jesus pays our debt of obedience, and His resurrection is the satisfaction of divine justice as the reversal of his unjust death

 

Bad Christian theology leads to bad Christian living. If one has any doubt about that just consider the voting record of evangelicals in the last election. Eighty percent voted for Trump.

I agree that "Bad Christian theology leads to bad Christian living" but I would leave Trump out of it. That is a giant logic leap. Lots of evangelicals voted Trump while plugging their nose. Our political situation is a dumpster fire in which there are no good options.

If God chooses to simply forgive sin the way a loving parent would forgive sin, without requiring some sort of pay off or sacrifice, there is no one to tell God that God is violating the demands of justice. God sets the standards of justice.

Not quite right here. Forgiveness is the provision and offer of restoration from a state of brokenness or deficiency. When God forgives us, He raises us from death.

Jesus did not have to die in order to satisfy some need in God or to pay off some debt owed to God.

I disagree. Redemption literally means payment of a price to free us from bondage. Debt forgiveness is the most popular image of forgiveness in the NT. Jesus pays our debt of obedience. Jesus pays what is necessary to repair our brokenness by sin.

Penal substitution is wrong in saying that Jesus pays our "debt of punishment", because there is no such thing.

 

Penal substitution means something very specific. It is not helpful when we broaden the meaning of terms—if penal substitution means everything, then it means nothing.

Penal (as in penalty) substitution is the idea that, to quote a popular hymn, “On that cross as Jesus died, the wrath of God was satisfied.” On the cross “God gave himself in the person of his Son to suffer instead of us the death, punishment and curse due to fallen humanity as the penalty for sin.” The idea is that humanity’s sin against God deserves the eternal outpouring of God’s wrath (hell), and He must execute this punishment in order to be a perfectly just God. So, in order to save humanity, God becomes human in the person of Jesus Christ and suffers the divine wrath in our place for our sins as our substitute. On penal substitution, salvation is not primarily from sin, or Satan, or ourselves, but from God Himself.

As popular theologian RC Sproul says:

My sin was placed upon him. And the one who was pure was pure no more. And God cursed him. It was as if there was a cry from heaven — excuse my language, but I can be no more accurate than to say — It was as if Jesus heard the words, ”God damn you.” Because that’s what it meant to be cursed. To be damned. To be under the anathema of the Father.

Penalty substitution requires at least two things (1) that Jesus’ death is just, or deserved, that is, to satisfy the wrath of God, to satisfy the retributive demands of God’s justice, and (2) that Jesus dies in our place, as our substitute, taking the punishment upon himself so we won't have to suffer it.

 

I gave a very specific definition and criteria for penal substitution, along with quotations from popular scholars. Do you affirm or deny that material?