Homer wrote:Rich,
I have no problem with your response.
After hearing that perspective, it made more sense to me. In penal substitution, there is this idea that God cannot accept the fact that He has been wronged, but rather must inflict His anger on some party. I was thinking about this earlier. Does God ever have to deny Himself? He commands us to deny ourselves, but that is primarily because we have sinful tendencies and ones which separate us from loving God and others. But God, in His infinite glory, when His attributes or desires conflict, does He have the freedom to choose what He wants to do? Penal substitution seems to portray God's character in a way that He cannot control His anger. Am I saying His anger is sinful? Not at all. It is completely just and pure. But despite the fact that God is completely justified in punishing sinners to the fullest extent, it appears that this is not what God ultimately intends to do. He takes no pleasure in giving people what they deserve, because death is what they deserve. And if He doesn't want anyone to die, but wills that all be saved and come to repentance, this brings us to a conflict. It would seem (according to pure logic) that the right thing for God to do to uphold His nature is to punish sin. But the fact that God is willing to show mercy seems to override His absolute right to punish sinners. The psalms often say things like "His anger is but for a moment", or "He will not be angry forever", "His lovingkindness is over all His works", etc. (Now that I think upon this, perhaps the cross is God's denial of Himself in the Trinity)
But penal substitution denies this. Penal substitution portrays that God cannot contain His anger, but that He must inflict it (albeit on Jesus if He must... in order to, you know, put that mercy He wants to put on people but just can't convince Himself to do unless He drinks someone's blood as insulin in order to stabilize His diabetic wrath levels). Crass, I know. But is it hard to not interpret it that way? Some who hold to the governmental view may still even interpret the character of God in such a way, but it sounds quite abhorrent to me.
The reason people grasp penal substitution so tightly is because if Jesus didn't really act as a perfect "substitute", then in some way sin was not fully punished. And I must say I agree. God overlooked sin in one sense (because the punishment was not inflicted fully), but He also demonstrated His abhorrence of it at the same time. God was able to overlook the punishment of sin by letting Christ die in place of the punishment. I do not believe that this is because God could not have forgiven without Christ dying, but rather that He sent Christ to die in order to complete His redemption program (for other reasons than giving Himself peace about resisting the urge to torch sinners). In this sense I lean toward Christus Victor, but I also see the validity of the governmental view, since it portrays God's willingness to call sin for what it is.
Penal substitution says: God cannot freely forgive until He justly punishes someone (even if it's Himself).
The Bible's portrayal of Divine love: God can freely forgive anything instead of justly punishing since it is not His ultimate desire to punish.
Hebrews 2 says Jesus tasted death for everyone (
Heb 2:9). This is certainly not that He died the death that every man deserved. If He did, then He would have to die on the cross millions of times (once for every sinner who gets saved). Advocates of penal substitution appeal to mystery in order to explain this. If they're right, I cannot object, but call me skeptical! It is definite that Jesus' death saved us
somehow. From sin? Yes. From Satan? Yes. From the world? Yes. From retributive punishment? I'll have to go with a maybe. If it's a yes, it's definitely not the full punishment. And that makes you wonder. If God doesn't need the full punishment to satisfy His own divine pet peeve, then does He really need to get some kind of retributive punishing in at all? Would He lose something if He chose mercy over retribution? Or is it possible that His means of justice is also His means of mercy?
This last question makes me reflect on George MacDonald's description of the union of God's justice and mercy, and it still rejoices my heart. It makes sense of the seeming paradox that exists between love, justice, and mercy*. I'm not necessarily sure that retributive, punitive punishment is really God's ultimate desire for
anyone. This flies as a contradiction in the face of penal substitution. Even if punitive, retributive punishment is something God would be willing to do, it seems that He more strongly desires to withhold those desires (not place them elsewhere). Somewhere in the mysterious mix Jesus' death also defeated sin, death, and the devil, thereby liberating humanity (i.e. Christus Victor, which I'm totally on board with, but I'm not necessarily willing to accept it as the
only way to understand the cross).
To conclude, I still accept certain aspects of all the views as biblically consistent, only with the exception of Anselm's satisfaction theory.
*MacDonald explains this in his unspoken sermon entitled "Justice"
