Things that aren't in the Bible
I’ve just been reminded of how unlovingly Christians can treat one another. A certain fairly prominent American teacher has been sending emails to various people, baldly telling them (explicitly) that they’re in league with the devil and are condemned to Hell. His basis for this claim (and his appalling rudeness)? The fact that these people don’t think that penal substitution is the be-all and end-all of biblical teaching about the atonement. Now, these letters to one side, it still amazes me that some people believe that penal substitution is both the model taught in the Bible and a complete description of the atonement. Neither of these is true, for very obvious and trivial reasons.
First, penal substitution isn’t taught in the Bible. The first clue to this should be that this model itself wasn’t developed until a thousand years after the Church began. For the first many hundreds of years, the Church had quite different ways of thinking about the atonement (as many Christians still do now). But, for those who maintain that it is the model taught in the Bible, let’s note that there are two aspects to this claim:
a) penal substitution is taught in the Bible
b) no other model is taught in the Bible.
Point (a) is obviously crucial, but there’s a distinction that we have to make – penal substitution is not the only substitutionary model of the atonement. That is, we cannot treat every passage in the Bible that talks about Jesus “dying in our place” as supporting PS as the One True Model. To justify PS, we need several things, including that the atonement can be understood as a substitution (Jesus being in our place), that what needed to be done was primarily to account for a breach of law, and that God’s role in this process is as Judge and Prosecutor. Now, we can find evidence for these, but the evidence gets weaker as we go along the chain. There can be little doubt that the Bible does talk about Jesus as acting in a substitutionary role in the atonement. There are various places where the Bible talks about the main problem being a breach of law – but these are separate places to those that talk about substitution. There are very few that talk about God’s role being as Judge and Prosecutor. Now, saying that God hates sin and is wrathful gets us nowhere towards PS – they talk about how God feels, not about how God chose to act. The simple truth is that there is nowhere in the Bible that clearly teaches penal substitution. It’s an idea that is developed from certain passages in the Bible but isn’t explicitly found within the Bible
That being so, we can see more clearly the importance of point (b): even if point (a) was wrong (and PS is taught in the Bible), the presence of these other models there means that PS cannot be held up as “the Biblical understanding”. And there are many different models in the Bible for how the atonement works. Perhaps the most common are the redemption model and the victory model. In the redemption model, Jesus paid the price to set us free from slavery. This has nothing to do with PS (although it is still a substitutionary model) – it talks instead about business, about value paid for goods received. It takes as its starting point that we are owned by someone else as a result of our sin, usually understood as our being owned by Satan. Jesus then pays the price of a life for a life, to set us free. In the victory model, the point is that Christ has won the victory over sin and death. By dying and rising to new life, Christ has demonstrated that He has more power than death and hence than sin (for death is the consequence of this sinful world).
The presence of these models shows, at the very least, that PS is not and cannot be claimed to be “the Biblical model” of the atonement. Thus, no one can claim that another Christian is damned to Hell for saying that other models are true, either as well or instead of PS.
So, PS isn’t taught in the Bible as the One True Model. However, there’s a second big problem with PS, which is that PS is an incomplete theory. It states that Christ took the punishment for our sin, satisfying the law and letting us stand as righteous before God. As such, it fails to account for two absolutely crucial things. First, and most important, it totally misses out the resurrection! The payment for our sin was death and Christ paid that. Fair enough. But there’s nothing in the theory to explain why the resurrection happened. By contrast, the resurrection is absolutely central to the victory model: without the resurrection, there is no victory! Second, PS deals only with our state – it makes us appear righteous before the law. However, it does nothing to change our nature. The Bible is very clear that, in Christ, we are made new creatures, but PS doesn’t deal with this at all. By contrast, again, boththe redemption model and the victory model deal explicitly with our sinful nature. In the redemption model, we are bought free from slavery to sin and are set free to live in righteousness (in contrast to PS, in which we merely have the punishment paid but are not actually changed in any way). In the victory model, sin itself is defeated and those who belong to Christ partake in that victory.
Thus, PS is, at best, a partial theory of the atonement that may help us understand certain aspects of what happened but misses out crucial parts. It is one model among many, and is a model derived from the Bible rather than one explicitly taught there. To claim anything more is to try and put into the Bible something that isn’t there, and to make central to the Christian faith something that should be peripheral.
As a final note, I am reminded once again by this whole affair of this: “By this shall all men know that you are my disciples: that you love one another.” If we cannot speak to one another in love, we are not acting as Christ’s disciples. And we must remember that “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.”
pax et bonum
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I am having a hard time grasping what you are calling “penal substitution”. Clearly Christ was a propitiation for our sins, but is this PS you are describing something less than that? “Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. And not only so, but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement.“Romans 5:9-11
It seems like a lot more than a debt paid to me – it is an adoption, a gift, and a complete transformation of the soul of the believer. I know you think me rather fundamentalist – but this idea seems like what I consider fundamentalist – focusing on details instead of the gospel.
By the way, who is this “prominent American teacher”? Oftentimes I find that when the press uses these kind of terms, they are anything but prominent or influential.
Hammertime () (URL)
1:57pm on 01 June 2006
In particular if the PS model does not imply a change in us, how does it account for a division into those being saved and those not?
arvan ()
2:11pm on 01 June 2006
Penal substitution is the idea that we are guilty of breaking the law and that God must punish us according to the penalty – death. However, instead of punishing us, God sends His Son, who takes the punishment that was due to us and hence sets us right before the law. That is, PS focuses on the idea of Law and the law court in particular. It makes God both Judge and Prosecutor, and even Defender. And it deals only with the penalty for sin under the law.
The suggestion you were making is a sacrificial model, which is different again
As to this being “details”, I totally agree. That’s part of what I was talking about with “placing central what should be peripheral”. The huge fuss about penal substitution and the atonement gets a bit bizarre after a while, because people make this one model somehow normative for Christian faith. My main problem is with those who want to make this a requirement for Christian faith, rather than seeing it properly, as one model among many.
And, finally, I was trying to be a little discreet, because his identity isn’t really important. But, if you want to know, it was Jacob Prosch. Not huge, but not unknown either. I guess “prominent” might have been overstatement but I’ve heard of him a few times before this (hence “fairly”
Arvan,
The models of the atonement aren’t directly relevant to ideas of limited or unlimited salvation. They do affect them, though, which is why (I think) PS is so popular. It’s actually quite easy under this model to see why only some might be saved, for God chooses to let only some of us off (by placing Christ in our places). This is harder to see with the Victor model, because sin and death are conquered in the absolute, not only for some people.
pax et bonum
[John] () (URL)
2:38pm on 01 June 2006
As I suspected, the “fairly prominent evangelical” is a guy I have NEVER heard of, and I hang out in American evangelical circles. I think the post should be amended to read, “some whack job is sending emails…”!
Hammertime () (URL)
12:33am on 02 June 2006
Hammertime () (URL)
12:34am on 02 June 2006