Thanks for your kind words. A (relatively) short response is all I can give today (you might be saying “thank goodness!”). We could probably keep discussing these ideas for weeks, though, and not exhaust all we had to say.

I don’t think the clear implication of God “showing forth his righteousness” is punishment, even when that statement is connected to the preceding words, “God passed over former sins.” It’s not that such language couldn’t be referring to punishment, but neither does it demand such a reading. “Righteousness” means so much more than dispensing what’s owed or deserved. It means so much more than “doing what’s right,” especially in reference to God, whose every deed is right. God’s righteousness is his glory, his perfection, his self-emptying love, his power, and much more besides these. It is the goodness and appropriateness of all these things. It could be said that the showing forth of his righteousness is the same as the showing forth of himself: the Father’s self-revelation in the Son as man. In us, it is his life, the gift of himself.

Verse 21 says “the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed, being witnessed to by the law and the prophets,” etc. This righteousness of God is first of all Jesus Christ himself, the revelation of the Father, and then it is Christ in us, “even the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe.” Christ’s righteousness is apart from the law. It isn’t because he kept the law (which he certainly did), but because his life, being God’s life, is the righteousness of God. The righteousness of God that comes “to all and on all who believe” is none other than the life of Christ in us who believe. His righteousness is our righteousness not because he successfully kept the law (though he did obediently do that when we couldn’t), but because he is righteousness in his being and life, which is shared with us, apart from the law, in spite of our inability to keep the law (which itself was only a shadow, an indication, of righteousness, anyway).

God passed over the sins previously committed. Certainly, it was within his rights to punish, but it was not a necessity for him to so so, and rather than doing so, he in mercy showed his forbearance with humanity until the fulness of time, when his Son would be revealed, showing forth his righteousness and sharing it with all through his self-offering. This is God’s intent with man, to share himself with man, whom he knew from eternity would fall short of his glory. He passed over sins because his intent is not to punish but to save, and to do so by giving himself and so bringing man into communion with God. From what are we saved? Not from God, but from lack of God, from death, in which we had imprisoned ourselves when we forsook our life (God himself) for what seemed better to us.

And God was showing forth his righteousness and effecting our justification not just on the cross. It was in the entire incarnation, passion, death, resurrection and ascension, which is the entire economy of our salvation. The verses in Romans say “now” it is revealed, after the cross has occurred in time. It can’t simply be that this is referring to an instance of justice being served during the hours when Jesus hung on the cross.

This leads to your second point about the passage “to show his (God’s) righteousness at the present time, so that he (God) might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.” You say this unequivocally states that the cross shows God’s righteousness in his justice, which I don’t dispute as far as that goes. Then you note that you’re not imposing legal language here. My contention is that, biblically, “justice” is a much broader notion than any courtroom/sentencing scenario allows. The words “just,” “justified” and “justice” aren’t merely legal terms implying the proper way to pay back deeds. They also indicate the proper way to live and act (“He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness (mercy or steadfast love in some translations), and to walk humbly with your God.” Micah 6:8) Words relating to justice do have their legal and equitable aspect, which dominates in English. But “just” means more. It means “right” or “straight” or “proper.” This is clear in how that word is used in French, for example, where “le mot juste,” for example, doesn’t mean “the word that is fair” but “the word that is right and appropriate.”

I’m just trying to say that God being “just and the justifier” does not mean that he simply passed the test morally or legally (which he definitely did), and that he makes us “just as if” we did too. Rather, it means that he, in the incarnation, lived justly, properly, appropriately, according to the truth of our nature, as man was created to live, in communion with God. By his communion with us, he justifies us. That is, we become as we were created to be, we have our true source of life, and we are thus justified, made right.

You ask “What in the world does an innocent man being crucified have to do with justice? What injustice needed to be set right?” The injustice was that man had not given himself to God (true sacrifice is self-offering), had not obeyed God as he was created to do. In Christ, man did so, recapitulating the human condition by obediently assuming all the consequences of sin even unto death (which was the will of God for our salvation). That he was an innocent man meant that death had no claim on him (and no longer had a claim to justice of any sort) and he was able to burst asunder the gates of Hades that imprisoned humanity. That’s the justice in the injustice. A man has to die in order to enter Hades, and he must be innocent in order to rightfully despoil it for the sake of all humanity.

So, you and I have some differences about the signification of “justice,” just as we do with a word like “propitiation.” I read the word “justified” in my Bible, and I understand something other than “declared not guilty.” I must be clear, however. I am not denying the reality that Paul employs legal concepts as he writes to the Romans. It’s just that even in the midst of such concepts, he is clear that Christians are justified in a way that goes far beyond any legal corrective (which would be insufficient for our salvation without an ontological corrective). The law makes clear our weakness, and yes, our guilt. But Christ is our righteousness not within the framework of any law but apart from the law, and we appropriate him as our righteousness through “the law of faith” referred to in verse 27 and described in Chapter 4.

Well, those are some answers to those questions about how I can read those passages without feeling it necessary to resort to penal substitution. It’s not my goal to change your mind with this, I just hope I’m able to make some coherent sense regarding a different point of view. God bless you. Take care. Christ is risen!

You’re right– I would like to respond, but given the fact that the original post is now on page 3, it’s probably time for this thread to close. We continue to disagree, both on certain Biblical texts concerning the nature of Christ’s atonement and on church history’s treatment of those texts, but that will probably not be resolved here.

One last thing though, because I just realized this myself a few nights ago, and I’d like to see what you have to say about it — in Romans 3:25-26, Paul speaks of God putting Jesus forward “as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.”

Now, completely putting aside our disagreement over what “propitiation” even means (because I don’t necessarily think we’re going to see eye-to-eye on that), Paul further writes that God put Jesus forward “to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.”

If God “had passed over former sins,” but now, with the cross, He was “showing His righteousness,” what exactly does that mean? Is there not a clear implication of the *punishment* of sins on the cross?

Also, in verse 26, Paul states that Jesus had been put forward “to show his (God’s) righteousness at the present time, so that he (God) might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.” This verse states, with no equivocation, that the cross shows God’s righteousness in His *justice.* What in the world does an innocent man being crucified have to do with justice? What injustice needed to be set right? Note that I’m not imposing “legal language” on the text here– it is in the text itself.

Similarly, as to the above questions– they are not questions which I’m coming up with myself. They are questions which fairly cry out from the texts themselves, and I fail to see how these questions can be coherently answered without the penal substitutionary atonement of Christ on the cross. If you don’t wish to answer though, I understand– it has been a long discussion, and I thank you for it and wish both of you a blessed Easter Sunday!

It’s a flaw, I know, but I can’t seem to keep my writing from getting long. I do understand that this can make it hard to respond, and I also realize that I sometimes end up burying some of my own main points. I’ll try to be briefer this time, but I can’t make any promises.

I read with interest the excerpts from the church fathers that you provided. I have long respected these fathers (don’t know much about Gelasius of Cyzicus, though). But the quotes provided do seem to prove my point about the early church. These excerpts all state in various ways teachings that I already said I accept. However, what these quotes omitted to say is quite telling. None said anything about God’s wrath being appeased, satisfied or quenched or needing such appeasement, satisfaction or quenching. None said anything about God needing a sacrifice in order to fulfill justice or honor or wrath or anything else. None says the Father put a curse or a punishment upon the Son (rather, the Son took upon himself our curse, which is depicted as punishment only in a limited sense, insofar as it is the consigning of the human condition to the truth of its current mode of existence: that of decay and death that is the result of sin rather than the result of wrath or judgment, for the true judgment has not yet occurred). None of the quotes describes a change in God or in God’s disposition toward man. They all describe a change in humanity wrought by Christ, who in his one person mediated human and divine natures by bringing them into unity. These kinds of points in particular are what what I’m talking about when I refer to the “late developments” in penal substitutionary thinking that cannot be found in the first millennium of Christianity (or in the Bible).

I’m not even sure why the quote from Athanasius was offered as being exemplary of penal substitutionary teaching. It is among the most clear iterations of what I’ve been trying to say all along. “On the Incarnation” is one of the most foundational patristic texts on this topic. He says “The Word perceived that corruption could not be got rid of otherwise than through death.” This is the curse of sin, but it’s not depicted at all in connection with God’s wrath. It follows naturally from sin, the turning away from God, who is life (as Athanasius’ treatise is so clear about). This is true whether God is wrathful or not, it’s not the result of wrath that must be appeased by the death of its cause, nor is it the imbalance of injustice or dishonor.

The quote from Gregory of Nazianzus comes out of the same magnificent series of paschal orations as the quote which I provided earlier (my comment from March 31 marked at 8:14 a.m.), which is very explicit in saying that Jesus’ blood was not a payment (or satisfaction) to God (or to the devil, for that matter — if anything, it was a trick against the devil, according to some fathers).

The quote from Cyril of Alexandria can be fleshed out a bit more with another quote from him that represents early church thinking on Christ’s work: “For as long as sin sentenced only the guilty to death, no interference with it was possible, seeing that it had justice on its side. But when it subjected to the same punishment Him Who was innocent, and guiltless, and worthy of crowns of honour and hymns of praise, being convicted of injustice, it was by necessary consequence stripped of its power.” (from his treatise on the Incarnation) Here, it is not the devil or God that is paid in any way, but it is the power of sin, which in itself is a nonentity, that is negated by Christ’s unjust subjection to the penalty of sin. More specifically, I would add, it is the power of sin to hold humanity that is negated.

This is to say nothing of Augustine who directly challenged the objectionable points of penal substitution centuries before the theory came into vogue. He was very forceful in denying any need in God for sacrifice or for anything (this is borne out by numerous Old Testament passages), and in making the point that the atonement effected no change in God, but rather in us who needed the change. Augustine says in The City of God, “And who is so foolish as to suppose that the things offered to God are needed by Him for some uses of His own? Divine Scripture in many places explodes this idea. Not to be wearisome, suffice it to quote this brief saying from a psalm: ‘I have said to the Lord, Thou art my God: for Thou needest not my goodness.’ We must believe, then, that God has no need, not only of cattle, or any other earthly and material thing, but even of man’s righteousness, and that whatever right worship is paid to God profits not Him, but man. … God does not wish sacrifices in the sense in which foolish people think He wishes them, viz., to gratify His own pleasure.” Later, Augustine writes, “In Scripture they are called God’s enemies who oppose His rule, not by nature, but by vice; having no power to hurt Him, but only themselves. For they are His enemies, not through their power to hurt, but by their will to oppose Him. For God is unchangeable, and wholly proof against injury. Therefore the vice which makes those who are called His enemies resist Him, is an evil not to God, but to themselves.”

Augustine’s whole view of the atonement isn’t much different from that of Athanasius or from his teacher, Ambrose. In On the Trinity, Book Four, it’s fleshed out well. I wish I could quote the whole thing, but here’s an excerpt: “For it was brought to pass that the bonds of many sins in many deaths were loosed, through the one death of One which no sin had preceded. Which death, though not due, the Lord therefore rendered for us, that the death which was due might work us no hurt. For He was not stripped of the flesh by obligation of any authority, but He stripped Himself. For doubtless He who was able not to die, if He would not, did die because He would: and so He made a show of principalities and powers, openly triumphing over them in Himself. For whereas by His death the one and most real sacrifice was offered up for us, whatever fault there was, whence principalities and powers held us fast as of right to pay its penalty, He cleansed, abolished, extinguished … For whither (the Devil) drove the sinner to fall, himself not following, there by following he compelled the Redeemer to descend. And so the Son of God deigned to become our friend in the fellowship of death, to which because he came not, the enemy thought himself to be better and greater than ourselves. For our Redeemer says, Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Wherefore also the devil thought himself superior to the Lord Himself, inasmuch as the Lord in His sufferings yielded to him; for of Him, too, is understood what is read in the Psalm, For You have made Him a little lower than the angels: so that He, being Himself put to death, although innocent, by the unjust one acting against us as it were by just right, might by a most just right overcome him, and so might lead captive the captivity wrought through sin, and free us from a captivity that was just on account of sin, by blotting out the handwriting, and redeeming us who were to be justified although sinners, through His own righteous blood unrighteously poured out.”

There are similar quotes from most of the fathers provided on the Web site you referenced. In the end, I can’t help but seeing that the patristic passages that you linked to are being quoted without a deeper consideration of the broader teaching and milieu of those fathers. Sure, there is not perfect consensus in all the fathers about everything. Sure, if we didn’t have the fathers, we’d still have the Bible (and we’d also have to rehash the struggle for right doctrine that the fathers had to face). But that’s hypothetical. We do have the fathers, and therefore we do get to glimpse into the mind of the church in history (as we should if we believe we and they follow the same faith). When we look back, we see a persistent vision that does interprets the Bible in a way that not resemble the penal substitutionary view as typically espoused in our times, despite some points of agreement.

Also, I do believe that Isaiah 53 refers to the suffering savior whom we know as Jesus. The passage will be read at vespers for the Orthodox Holy Friday next week. There’s no disagreement from me that this is a passage on the atonement, and I acknowledge the fathers’ use of this and other passage, but I continue to maintain that they don’t read the passages in a penal substitutionary way.

Something else I wanted to clarify is that when I referred to you holding God to “abstract principles” of holiness, justice, etc., I was not suggesting that your every mention of such things was wrong. I was instead trying to say that when you speak of God in a way that suggests he is bound to act a certain way because of his holiness or his justice or his honor, then you have elevated the abstract concept of holiness or justice, etc., to the level of something that guides God or obligates him. Even if you are careful to depict such attributes as attributes, as being “internal” to God, the concepts end up being used to describe forces that drive God to act one way or another. We, being humans, can hardly help ourselves from thinking of God’s holiness, justice, wrath, etc. in ways that sound like God is subject to some higher determinism. Your own assertion that “God’s holiness and justice *demand* punishment for sin” lacks a biblical equivalent assertion and essentially says that God must react toward sin a certain way. But the fact is that God is bound by nothing, and he could forgive sin and heal its consequences simply by his will. But instead he chose to save us through the kenotic love described in Philippians because his love was such that he not only wanted to fix us, but he wanted to unite himself to us and share with us the perfect communion shared by the persons of the Holy Trinity. There is plenty of biblical logic in that. The whole logic of sacrifice, which is symbolic in the OT of self-offering (which is indicated by God’s words about sacrifice in Psalm 51 and many similar passages), a symbol that is reality in Christ, depicts this reality.

There’s a good chance that you will want to respond to my statements here. If so, know that I’ll be reading what you have to say, but I probably won’t respond soon, if at all, because I’m about to take a trip. My Internet access won’t be guaranteed, and it’ll be more than a week before I get back home. This iMonk post will probably have decended to Page 3 of the blog by then, and I suspect it’s time to move on. I just want to say again, though, that I’ve enjoyed our little clash here. Your way of explaining the penal substitutionary view has much to recommend it, even if you and I don’t agree. May the peace and blessing of Christ our Lord be upon you, Christopher. And may it also be upon you, Jonathan H. This has been a good conversation. Thanks.

To Christopher Lake:

Yes, I do know a little more of the reformed tradition, and the part of the reformed tradition that offers respectful engagement with the world is excellent. I wish more Christians (myself included) better knew that part of the tradition. BUT I have not read any Kuyper or Schaeffer, sorry!

As for the politics of the cross, I think the cross is inherently political. Jesus was crucified with “King of the Jews” atop his head, and crucifixion itself was a political act against rebellious populations. I think the cross reveals a very different kind of politics. This seems to be what Mark 10:35-45 is all about. We American Christians seem to have done far too little thinking about what that means, and instead, keep trying to get at the top of the hierarchy.

I think that the Exodus is the primary metaphor for salvation in the Bible. And Jesus reorients the passover-and-Exodus around himself and the cross with the last supper. In other words, the cross is not primarily about punishment, but about Exodus, about setting slaves free. Of course it is only paradoxically in becoming enslaved to the Lord Jesus that we find true freedom. But even in the Exodus itself, the movement was not from slavery to freedom, but from enslavement to Pharaoh to enslavement to Yhwh.

So, in a sense, I am a liberation theologian. However, some liberation theologians seem to think that setting people politically free with guns is the way to go, but this seems to me to be 180 degrees from the Exodus and the cross of Jesus. Of course, as we talked about earlier, if you set people free politically, but not economically, or spiritually, then your politics will eventually become corrupted.

Thank you for your reply. I do wish, though, that you would either make your responses a bit more brief or at least break them up into shorter paragraphs. This would help me, both with ease of reading and of responding. I haven’t replied in great detail to some of your comments simply because they were so lengthy and very hard on my eyes, sitting here in front of a computer screen, trying to read them.

About the early church fathers and the Atonement, there is not the consensus among them which you claim regarding this issue. If you click on the following link, you will find excerpts from the writings of eleven early church fathers, commenting on the Biblical teaching of Jesus being “cursed” or “punished” by the Father for our sins: http://piercedforourtransgressions.com/content/category/5/15/52/ I recommend that you read the entire excerpts (which are not terribly long), not simply the parts which are in bold, in order to understand the entire Biblical argument(s) being made.

I didn’t mean to imply that because you are Orthodox, I already know exactly what you believe and why you believe it on the nature of the Atonement. However, what you have written on this issue, thus far, does go along fairly well with what I have read from both Orthodox sources themselves, and from non-Orthodox sources, explaining the teaching of the Orthodox Church. I did overstate, to an extent, when I wrote that the Orthodox tradition “seriously downplays” Biblical teaching on God’s wrath. I apologize for that carelessness on my part and ask for your forgiveness. There is no doubt, though, that the Orthodox tradition has a significantly different understanding of God’s wrath against sin than the Reformed tradition, and I do believe that the Reformed understanding is much closer to the *whole* Biblical understanding of God’s wrath than is Orthodoxy.

As for your interpretations of the specific Biblical texts to which I have made reference, it is honestly hard to know how to respond to you, because you are denying what, to me (and to many others, *throughout* history), they say quite clearly. If you don’t believe that the “curse” in Galatians 3:13 is ultimately from God, perhaps the excerpts from the church fathers will convince you. If you don’t believe that Isaiah 53 refers to the Suffering Savior whom we know as Jesus, again, read the texts above from the aforementioned early church fathers which refer to the passage. The fathers who refer to Isaiah 53 very much think it to be a description of Christ’s Atonement on the cross. The same is true of the fathers who refer to Galatians 3:13-14 and 2 Corinthians 5:21. These are the very same generations of early church fathers which you say are more likely to have a right understanding of the texts than me or you. In the excerpts that I have provided for you, these men do understand the Biblical texts in question in a penal substitutionary way.

In the end though, even if we didn’t have these writings of the early church fathers, we still have the Biblical texts themselves, and you and I simply understand them quite differently. I believe that one understanding is clear; you believe otherwise. Who is right?

Well, one thing which I have noticed is that you say I am holding God to “abstract principles” of holiness, justice, etc., and that my doing so seems to do violence to the Biblical texts. Mome, my understanding of God’s holiness and justice is *from* the text of the Bible as a whole. God’s holiness and justice *demand* punishment for sin. It is not as if He really wants to forgive sinners, but He somehow can’t, because sin must be punished. It is also not as if He simply wants punish sin, in an out-of-control outburst, and that this punishment has nothing to do with love.

On the cross, God’s wrathful punishment is *bound up with* His love, and vice versa. His love is *bound up with* His justice, and vice versa. They are all parts of the character of God, and the cross expresses them in a way which is *not* contradictory. In this vein, I still fail to ascertain any *Biblical* logic behind your assertion that penal substitution pits God’s love against His justice. Rather, penal substitution *expresses* His holiness, His justice, and His love. These are far from being abstract principles to which I am “holding” God. They are actual characteristics of God Himself, from the Scriptures.

Thank you for your comments. I appreciate them.

Christopher Lake,

My first reaction to reading your response was the sense that now that you know I’m Orthodox, I’ve been bagged, tagged and stuck on a pin. Of course, this background is going to be present in my debate here with you, but really, this back-and-forth we’ve been having about penal substitution is not specifically a discussion of Orthodox theology vs. Reformed theology. None of the points I’ve made in this discussion are exclusive to Orthodoxy. I think Jonathan Hunnicutt’s contributions and many of the comments from people farther above serve as proof that you don’t have to be Orthodox to hold to many of the convictions I’ve expressed, or at least ideas that are similar. I mean, heck, much of what I’ve said could be found in the pages of C.S. Lewis. Penal substitution is debated in many Protestant quarters, so not everyone agrees that it is a clear summary of biblical teaching.

Anyway, I’m emphasizing to you that I’m not here trying to peddle Orthodoxy to you or anyone else. I seems like a decent chunk of your response was devoted to outlining the theological “category” I belong to and telling me in a few different ways that you thought the Reformed tradition more accurately represented biblical teaching than the Orthodox tradition. It seems to go without saying that this would be your position. But you really have addressed very little of the actual arguments and statements I’ve made regarding penal substitution, and the two main questions that have been asked remain unanswered.

The first question was: Why doesn’t any Bible passage clearly spell out the penal substitutionary viewpoint? I know that you have said repeatedly that this viewpoint comes from the biblical texts themselves. But then, so do contrary viewpoints, which interpret those texts differently. I’m familiar with much of the biblical rationale for your view, but most, if not all, of it is very inductive. It seems more grounded in reasoning about concepts of God’s character than in the exclusive revelation of God in the person of Jesus Christ.

I should be more clear about something, though. I am not dissenting with everything you have said, and there are components of the penal substitutionary view that I know are biblical, such as the fact that death is the sentence or punishment for sin and Jesus willingly took that sentence upon himself when he gave himself as a sacrifice for the world. It’s not incorrect to say that Jesus took on the consequence of the sins of the world and died in our place, but it means that he participated in our death, thus allowing us to be participants in his resurrection. We still die, after all, but death has been conquered and everyone will be resurrected in the last day. As Christians, we actually die with him now before our physical death, and by his grace, we put to death sin in our members, so that we might participate in his resurrection and life now. “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.” (1 Peter 2:24).

I also don’t dispute that Christ gave himself as a ransom, that he paid the price of sin. You and I have some variations in the way we think of these things, obviously, which come out of or contribute to the really significant divergence between us, which is this talk about God’s justice and wrath needing appeasement.

Where is the biblical text that makes it clear that God’s wrath must be appeased or that supports such a notion of necessity in God? That Jesus was made to be sin for us and that he became a curse for our sake do not tell me that God’s wrath must be appeased. These truths about Jesus fit nicely into the overall vision that I have tried to express. God shared our life, assuming even the depth of its miserable fallenness, that we might share his. “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Cor. 5:21). This verse that you quoted matches what I have been saying, but tells me nothing about appeasement of God’s wrath. It tells me something about the lengths to which the Father, in his love for mankind, would go in surrendering his own Son to our condition, giving the most valuable gift that could be given, in order to fix our problem, to fix US.

Jesus’ death on the cross definitely did fulfill the justice of God and canceled the debt of righteousness that we owed but could not pay. It fulfilled the sentence of death for us. But this was not because God needed this to happen, and it was not due to an unquenched wrath of the Father that needed satisfaction and that was meted out upon the Son. God, being the Almighty One, is able to cancel our debt simply through the exercise of his mercy, which never fails, and there would be no injustice for him to do so, because all he does is just and he may do as he pleases because he is sovereign. But he showed his power and love when Jesus paid the debt himself by offering his sinless humanity and the Father willed to receive such a precious offering. It was not the Father’s wrath that was being poured out on the Son. The curse of sin and death is not God’s wrath. It is the consequence of having turned away from life. God didn’t tell Adam and Eve that he would punish them in wrath if they disobeyed him. He told them they would surely die. But even after sin came into the world, God sought faith and and accepted repentance in his people. Look at the Ninevites, who averted wrath by repentance. The biblical picture, over and over, of God’s wrath is not a picture of a fixed and emotional sentence, but of a phenomenon that is turned away by the contrite heart. Does this mean God changes his mind? No, he is unchanging. It means that his one visitation and one action is grace upon the humble and repentant and punishment on the proud and hard-hearted.

The second question was: Why do we not find the teaching of penal substitution in the early centuries of the church? If this teaching is the primary truth about the cross, and if it’s clear in the pages of scripture, then why does it take hundreds of years for it to begin to take shape in rudimentary speculations and then hundreds more years for it to appear as a developed conviction in writers such as Thomas Aquinas and, later, the reformers?

Actually, you did give me something of an answer to the second question, but it seems unsatisfactory to me. You told me that your views come from the Bible and then you asked if many early church fathers had different understandings on these issues, should we believe them or the Bible. Well, when you word it like that, how else can I answer? But the early church fathers knew the scriptures well, and many of them spilled their blood to teach what scripture taught. They knew their scriptures as well as any reformer knew his scriptures (read Irenaeus if you want proof of this), and of course I would argue that the early church fathers knew them better, knowing the language (in the case of the Greek speakers), being closer to the cultural context (and being free of the nominalism of the late Middle Ages and the Rennaissance). I’m not making an apologetic for patristic infallibility at all, mind you. Rather, I’m saying that when you see a consensus in the early church, then you have a pretty good idea of what early Christians believed on some particular matter. When you see that the early church’s consensus about the atonement doesn’t even resemble penal substitution, it doesn’t suggest that penal substitution is the clearly biblical idea that its proponents make it out to be … unless, I suppose, you are some kind of restorationist or you think that the early church just didn’t know how to read its scriptures and understand its most central teachings.

When you see the church in its early centuries consistently reading the Bible differently from the way you read it, it should be some kind of red flag, at the very least. The ease with which you brush aside the convictions of the early church seems to indicate that this church was populated by so many biblical dunderheads who just didn’t get the most central message of the scriptures. Here, we’re talking about the church that endured wave after wave of persecution and heretical onslaught, the church in which countless martyrs died and in which illustrious people who knew God defended and articulated the faith and doctrines that we hold dear and biblical regarding the Trinity and the incarnation against teachers of false doctrines who were able to cause much havoc among Christians. It’s quite insufficient to simply say that the fathers disagree with the Bible because they don’t read particular scriptural texts the same way you do or the same way the reformers do. There are reasons they read those texts differently and it’s not that they just don’t get it.

All of us have the tendency to read our own presuppositions into the Bible. This is why it’s healthy to examine Christian consensus, especially the earliest and most widely distributed teachings, and question our own divergences from that. In the case of penal substitution, there is a marked divergence between that paradigm of the atonement and the paradigm that dominated the early church. Why is that? It most definitely is not because the early church didn’t know the scriptures.

I said that penal substitution pits God’s love against his justice but that his justice should rather be identified with his love. You said that these are just assertions and nothing more (this retort is just an assertion as well). But penal substitution posits that God loves people and at the same time he is justly wrathful against them, or it says God loves people and wants to gather them to himself, but there is an obstacle that he couldn’t get around, which is that God must carry out justice or quench his wrath by punishing sin. Admittedly, in your view, love arrives at a resolution, but this view cannot avoid depicting an “episode” (for lack of a better word) of conflict in God in which his love toward mankind is pitted against his just wrath toward mankind. You ask who are we to say this, but it’s hard to see how this isn’t what the teaching of penal substitution says (at least insofar as I’ve heard it explained, including from you). For one thing, you have the cross, where the Son is the manifestation of God’s love and the suffering and death that he undergoes is the manifestation of the Father’s wrath being poured out upon him, and God is being punished by God. If this isn’t a conflict in the life of God, albeit a conflict that is also its own resolution, then I don’t know what it is. I’m not the one saying it. But I don’t know how you can square this conflict in God’s life with biblical teaching of the unity of the Father and the Son and Jesus being the very revelation of the Father.

I also said that notions about God’s justice too often subject God to the necessity of principles. Don’t just tell me that this is an assertion, tell me how it isn’t true. In penal substitution, God is obligated to punish and quench his wrath because of his justice. He cannot simply forgive the repentant person until he has carried out the obligatory sentence. In this view, justice becomes something other than an attribute, it becomes a determining principle. In this view, justice is spoken of the same way we would speak of an ideal human justice and it plays a role that is independent from God’s love, and God’s wrath is often anthropomorphized.

My other statement, that God’s justice should be identified with his love, isn’t just an empty assertion. “God is love” backs this up. Everything he does is love. You yourself said his wrath and justice are part of his love, though I would say that the penal substitutionary view separates these two things. I think it’s necessary to identify justice and love, because all of God’s activity is revelation of himself and God is not divided. All his activity is the multiform manifestation of the single unity of who he is.

If I sometimes I do make assertions, it’s basically for economy’s sake. If I were going to provide the most comprehensive citations or background for every statement I made, I might as well stop writing blog comments and start working on a book. But none of my assertions are made out of the blue. There’s more to be said about any of them, but there just isn’t always the time to give them the fullest treatment.

About my assertion that God doesn’t cast anybody into Hell. Here’s a great way to totally sidetrack our conversation. I think I explained myself when I say that we are the ones to choose hell for ourselves (in the manner of choosing life and death in Deuteronomy 30:15). I was primarily responding to Joseph, who essentially described God casting people into hell simply for not possessing a “get out of jail free card.” He was describing God as though God were arbitrary. But God is not arbitrary, as I’m sure you agree. The people who go to Hell are those who prefer the darkness to the light of Christ (that is the condemnation, according to Christ’s words). This darkness they prefer is the outer darkness, Gehenna, the consuming fire of God’s glory, the “everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his power” (2 Thess. 1:9; if you read that in the ESV, be sure to take note of the footnote for that verse). This fire of Christ’s appearing in his glory is the judgment that burns up sin, and when a person has given himself over to sin, it burns that person up. They prefer it; they pick it. They have put themselves in that place (this is necessary to the view that sin is willful rebellion against God). It is their experience of the glory of his power according to where they have placed their love. God “casting” them is figurative language, I think (after all, God will not be picking people up and throwing them), just like language about God having hands, which he would need to do any literal casting. We always should avoid anthropomorphism when interpreting words about God. So, I responded to Joseph and challenged what appeared to be his common caricature of Christian teaching on the punishment of sinners. But you ask what I have to say about Luke 12:4-5. I say that God is the one who has the authority to cast into Gehenna, and thus we should fear him and not fear men who only have the ability to harm our bodies in this life. Satan does not have this authority, for Gehenna was prepared for Satan and his angels.

A few comments on your comments about Orthodoxy: You said “Orthodoxy seriously downplays the Biblical passages on God’s wrath and defines sin primarily as “sickness,” on the part of humans, rather than willful rebellion (primarily, not completely).” If you believe Orthodoxy doesn’t understand sin as willful rebellion, you aren’t as familiar with Orthodoxy as you suggest you are (a reading of the Great Canon of St. Andrew of Crete would be helpful for clearing this up, or just a perusal of the prayers before communion or some typical morning and evening prayers). The sickness is our fallen state and the subjection of our will to passions in this fallen world, wherein we are given to sin, which is rebellion toward God. This state is broken communion from God. It’s called the flesh. It is the tendency toward death, thus it is sickness. This sickness leads us to sin, and it is exacerbated by sinning. It is healed by sharing in the life of Christ, wherein the restoration of communion between God and man is progressively brought to manifestation in the Christian. This is what it is to be “transformed by the renewing of your mind.” This is what “to live is Christ” means, or “it’s no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me” or “be perfect” and other such biblical statements. This is what it is to “work out your salvation in fear and trembling,” and thank God that it is he who works in us.

Orthodoxy doesn’t “downplay” biblical passages on God’s wrath. It understands them differently than you do, but it takes them no less seriously. And again, if you think Orthodoxy doesn’t understand the fear of God or God’s absolute holiness, then you don’t understand it as well as you think you do. This is not something you’ll always pick up in reading introductory books, but it’s something you can’t miss in the Church’s prayers. In any case, I don’t want our discussion to become a debate about Orthodoxy. I just thought I needed to respond to a couple of your statements about it, particularly because it might help to avoid presumptions about other things I’ve said.

I think I should also make it clear to you, Christopher, that despite our differences, I have been enjoying this exchange with you and appreciate your patience with me. I hope that any abrasiveness in my comments are not offensive to you. Sometimes, a debate like this is worth having, if for no other reason than helping each of us to clarify things in our own minds, but I don’t want to be a burden to you with my many words or an overbearing tone. Forgive me if I have been that sort of interlocutor.

I’d like to hear more about your statement that salvation is “political” (among the many things that you mentioned). What does that look like, in your understanding? I definitely agree that it is good for Christians to live out the implications of their worldview in the political sphere (especially as it is a *worldview*).

You seem to only (or perhaps, primarily) be aware of one stream of the Reformed tradition. Have you heard of Abraham Kuyper and/or Francis Schaeffer? If not, it might be encouraging for you to read some of their works. These men, and others in Reformed Christianity, definitely did not believe in private, individual salvation in a way that does not affect the wider world. Covenant Theological Seminary in St. Louis has a similar “holistic” Reformed worldview which you might find encouraging.

I don’t want to say that my personal salvation is not important, I am sorry. I have read things like Galatians 2, so I do believe that there is a deeply personal aspect of salvation. However, in our incredibly individualistic American culture, I think we emphasize this individual dimension far too much.

I believe that the salvation that Jesus won on the cross and resurrection is holistic, it’s political, it’s economic, it’s spiritual, it’s social, it’s ecological, it’s personal, it’s communal, etc. Of course, if God saves everything but individuals, then we as individuals would run amok destroying everything else. On that point, we seem to agree. However if God only saves us spiritually, the reverse logic applies, the unsaved areas of our politics, economics, social life, etc. will infect our spiritual salvation, because they are all connected. In other words, if we are no longer enemies of God, but our politics, economics, and social practices, etc are still enemies of God, our salvation is incomplete.

So what I’m trying to argue for is balance, and I think we are quite unbalanced.

Now, humans do have dominion over creation, we do bear the image of God, so humanity is thus the hinge of restoring/renewing creation. Similarly, Israel is the hinge of humanity, and Israel’s Messiah is the hinge of Israel, thus the cross and resurrection of Jesus, as Israel’s Messiah, will lead to the restoration of Israel, humanity, and all of creation.

I know this probably sounds odd in the reformed tradition, but look at 1 Cor 15, look where Paul goes with the text. Jesus resurrection leads to the restoration of Israel (symbolized by the twelve in vs. 5 and the rest of the Christian community, but it continues to the restoration of humanity (vs 20-22), to the restoration of all creation (vs 28).

Now, I agree, my table scraps are important to me. But I would be lying if I said they were the whole feast.

When I wrote to you, “Think about it– would you really *care* about the other benefits of the cross if it *didn’t* save you, and other believers, from God’s wrath?,” I was not in any sense making a pragmatic argument.

I asked you that rhetorical question because you seem to think that the secondary benefits of the cross (and yes, I do believe they are secondary) should be emphasized as much (maybe even more) than its primary benefit of saving believers in Christ from God’s wrath.

The salvation of sinners does not merely comprise “table scraps,” in terms of God’s plan, Jonathan. 1 Corinthians 15:3-4: “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.”

You think that I see the cross as too small. I know that it purchased many blessings other than the salvation of sinners– but speaking as a sinner, a former enemy of God, that blessing is definitely the most precious one to me (not the only one, by far, but the most precious and important one, for us sinners!).

More importantly, though, than what you might see as my “subjective” view, as a sinner, the salvation of sinners is also the “blessing of the Cross” that I see emphasized *most in the Scriptures,* especially when one understands that many of the “physical” manifestations of the Kingdom (miracles and such) were *signs* pointing, not exclusively, but largely, to Jesus’s work on the cross and the Holy Spirit’s work in conversion.

Yes, they were signs of the Kingdom’s outbreaking and its healing of a fallen creation. If the creation were healed, and *we* weren’t reconciled to God though, we would continue to destroy it and each other. Moreover, God is a *personal* God, and it is clear from the Scriptures that *as* as a personal God, He places an even higher premium on reconciling personal fallen beings to Himself than an impersonal creation. Not that He doesn’t do, and isn’t doing, the former, but Jesus didn’t die primarily for the creation. He died primarily to *reconcile sinners to God.*

As I’m sure that you know, the Reformed and the Orthodox have significantly different beliefs about the Bible’s teachings on God’s wrath and the nature of our personal sinfulness. I do have some knowledge of Orthodox theology. My uncle is Greek Orthodox, although he is probably more “liberal” in his theology than you are (influences of postmodernism and such). I have read about the Orthodox understanding of various Biblical themes, from more conservative Orthodox sources (such as Timothy Ware) and from other sources as well. All of which is only to say that, I’m not coming from a place of being ill-informed about Orthodox theology. If I believed that it best reflected the Bible’s teachings, I would *be* Orthodox. Obviously, I don’t, and therefore, I’m not.

I noticed at least two assertions in your last couple of comments that, rather than being supported by Biblical evidence, were simply *left* as assertions– and an assertion does not a Biblical case make. To Joseph, you wrote, “God does not cast anybody into Hell.” What, then, do you do with Luke 12:4-5:
4 “I tell you, my friends, do not fear those who kill the body, and after that have nothing more that they can do. 5 But I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him!

If “God does not cast anybody into Hell” (in your words), then who is being referred to in this passage, mome? Who is it that kills and has authority to cast into Hell? If you’re going to say that it is Satan, then that will have the unfortunate effect of making Satan sovereign over peoples’ deaths, rather than the God who created them.

To Jonathan, you wrote: “Notions about God’s justice too often subject God to the necessity of principles (such as concepts of holiness and justice) and penal substitution pits his love against his justice, when actually his justice should be identified with his love.” Mome, respectfully, these are nothing but assertions. You give no Biblical support at all for them. Who are *we* to say that “penal substitution pits God’s love against His justice”? Such a presupposition (which is exactly what it is), if embraced, will cause one to either ignore or significantly misunderstand Biblical teaching on God’s holy wrath against sin and Jesus’s atonement for sin on the cross.

This is a big part of why I am not Orthodox. Again, respectfully, I see presuppositions in Orthodox theology that cause real misunderstandings of what the Bible teaches on certain crucial subjects. Orthodoxy seriously downplays the Biblical passages on God’s wrath and defines sin primarily as “sickness,” on the part of humans, rather than willful rebellion (primarily, not completely). Reformed theology acknowledges and takes into account the Biblical passages which speak of sin as sickness, but it also takes into account the numerous passages, throughout the Bible, which speak of sin as deliberate, knowing, hateful human rebellion against a holy God. Penal substitution is the supreme Biblical expression of the fact that God’s holy wrath and justice (in regards to sin) are *part of* His love. He justly punishes sin on the cross because He *loves sinners.* 2 Corinthians 5:21: “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

Speaking of which, the problematic (Reformed) “notions” of God’s holiness and justice that you mentioned (and to which I hold) come from *the Biblical texts themselves.* If many early church fathers had different understandings on these issues, should we take their opinions over the teachings of the Scriptures themselves?

Please understand, I am far from holding an *anti*-tradition view. The Reformed tradition itself, historically, valued the early church fathers, which you already know, if you have read much of Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion. However, as I have written earlier, tradition becomes unhelpful when it leads us away from the Scriptures and Scriptural understanding– as I believe that the Orthodox tradition does, in certain important areas. I don’t mean that disrespectfully– again, if I were persuaded that Orthodoxy best reflected Biblical teaching on these issues, I would become Orthodox as quickly as is humanly possible. I am simply not persuaded though.