Featured What is Penal Substitution Atonement

Ha! I knew it was coming. Maybe we can get to 15 pages of rants before 7:15 PM Pacific.

What's the record?

 

Not so, @The Biblicist.

Actually, I was very much interested in your view. That was the purpose of this thread.

I understand your view of penal and substitution (up until you rejected PSA). I was asking if you understood the retributive justice framework of PSA to be the distinction between Substitution Atonement and PSA. I was not accusing you of anything.

Quite simply, to reject retributive justice here is to reject PSA. God's justice, His Law, demanded that sin be punished. God punished Jesus with this punishment in our stead, satisfying the demands of the Law.

I was asking if this was the distinction that separated my view from yours, Luther's from PSA. You somehow took offense to the question. That is ignorance on your part, not mine. Which is your problem, not mine.

If you reject the idea that the Law demands punishment for sin and that God punished Jesus with this punishment in our place then you, IMHO, reject PSA and are confused about your own beliefs.

 

As far as I know there are not several definitions of "retributive justice" when it comes to the atonement.

My question was if you believed the restorative justice as a framework of PSA is what makes the difference between Substitution Atonement and PSA. I was not asking if PSA holds to retributive justice because I am not ignorant of the theory. For your edification, it does. And the Christus Victor motif holds a framework of restorative justice.

These are not terms that you can just redefine as you see fit. These terms have meaning and they have meaning in the discussion of the Atonement. It is obvious that you have no clue as to the difference between retributive and restorative justice on these grounds. Your best answer would have been simply "I don't know" instead of false accusations and insults.

 

Well, what I've asked I have asked honestly. Unfortunately @The Biblicist took offense at the term "retributive justice" because "retributive" is close to "retribution" therefore he assumes I am saying whatever he assumes I am saying.

What I've asked is if the framework of retributive justice within PSA is what differs when it is compared to Substitution or Satisfaction Atonement. I ask because Substitution Atonement seems to lean more towards the restorative justice of Christus Victor.

Can one hold to PSA yet reject retributive justice (i.e., can one hold to PSA and reject that justice required a punishment for sin which Christ paid in our place as God poured out this wrath upon Him)? @The Biblicist believes so, but I do not see how this is possible (it seems to deny the very foundation of PSA). And it seems to me that this is the difference between PSA and the other theories.

My conclusion on this hijacked thread is that the primary distinction between Substitution and PSA is the contextual framework of retributive justice. Where Substitution in general views Christ as punished for our sins, it is not until viewed as retributive punishment that God punishes Christ by pouring upon Him the wrath due our sins - which is PSA.

 

I agree (and J.I. Packer has a very interesting article on PSA).

But even with Packer (who acknowledges contributions from other theories) there is the problem of how satisfaction is actually made (what is this satisfaction). We all agree Christ bore our sins, and we all agree He died which was the punishment of sin. But there is a difference.

Is it as Luther believed, that sin and death were "engulfed and swallowed up" by virtue of Christ's own nature which satisfied the demands against us by outweighing sin and wrath? This assumes a view of justice that would be associated with the Christus Victor view (a restoration, Christ by virtue conquered sin and death...i.e., sin and God's wrath against us). Or is it more along the lines of traditional PSA - that justice demanded sin be punished, Jesus bore our sins, God poured out His wrath on Jesus as this punishment due our sins?

They are similar but they also go into different directions.

I sincerely wish we had the temperament to discuss this topic.

 

Actually, I don't mind taking "yes" as an answer here. I just don't want one understanding confused for the other.

At one time (when I first studied theories of the atonement seriously) we had names for these doctrines. Origen fell under the Ransom Theory (a specific view of the Ransom Theory), Martyr -Christus Victor, Anselem - Satisfaction, Luther - Substitution, and Calvin - PSA. Now they are blended a bit more than I would like. All of them are now considered by some to have held Penal Substitution Theory (except perhaps Origen).

I'm not complaining, I just find myself in a "new world" where terms have lost their meaning.

How do you speak of the Atonement clearly if such a broad range falls under PSA? If we don't distinguish between things like retributive justice and restorative justice, then are we not talking past each other?

What is even more interesting, though, is how these distinctions we no longer make affect how we view even doctrines we would assume we have in common (like positions on election, for example).