Other popular alternatives to penal substitution
If you have followed me to this point, will, I suspect, have been pressing upon you with growing and exasperated insistence – especially if you are acquainted with the extensive existing literature on the Atonement.
Do I not realize, you will be asking, that I am not the only Christian out there out with ‘issues’ over penal substitution? And do I not realize that there already exist certain well-rehearsed responses and well-trodden paths of argument, widely accepted by Christian apologists outside the sphere of die-hard Evangelicalism, some of them with impact even on Evangelical mainstreamers such as Nicki Gumbel? And why, if I am indeed aware of such responses, does my own alternative account not more closely resemble those others ?
So, let me begin by reassuring you that, yes, I do indeed ‘realize’. And that, if I have waited this long to respond to the views of other people, it has not been ignorance or intellectual arrogance on my part. My priority in this piece, reflected in my order of presentation, has been to offer something I personally see as positive and useful to puzzled non-believers and hard-pressed apologists: not, in other words, to undermine explanations that others have found largely convincing in a manner that might unsettle the faith of sincere believers.
But now is perhaps the moment to say something more about other popular alternatives, and how the alternative proposed here relates to them.
As you will see, I am not altogether satisfied with the kind of exposition of Christian fundamentals that has emerged out of critiques of penal substitution in the Atonement literature. I shall be explaining the reasons for this dissatisfaction in this and the three following chapters.
Needless to say, the approach advocated here is not my own invention. It exists, and has always existed, even if it hasn’t been the approach most frequently adopted by the (largely Protestant) Atonement literature over recent years. You will find this approach exemplified in the following books: F.C.N. Hicks, The Fullness of Sacrifice (1930); Frances Young, Sacrifice and the Death of Christ (1975); Godfrey Ashby, Sacrifice: Its Nature and Purpose (1988); John Moses, The Sacrifice of God (1992); Bruce Chilton, The Temple of Jesus (1992); Ian Bradley, The Power of Sacrifice (1995); John Dunnill, Sacrifice and the Body (2013).
Outside the Atonement literature you will also find the same approach in studies of liturgy and the Eucharist. Given the role of the Eucharist in a correct understanding of Christian sacrifice, it is no surprise that the implications of what these studies have to say about the Eucharist often extend into the area of theology. To the extent such studies consider the meaning as well as the form of Christian ritual, they develop these theological implications quite explicitly and at considerable length. So, to the list of works already cited, I would add the following as just as relevant for our purposes: Henri de Lubac, Corpus Mysticum (1939); Gregory Dix, The Shape of the Liturgy (1945); Louis Bouyer, Eucharist (1966); Alexander Schmemann, The Eucharist (1987); Edward Kilmartin, The Eucharist in the West (1988); Robert Daly, Sacrifice Unveiled (2009); Eugene Schlesinger, Sacrificing the Church (2019).
The Catholic bias of this second list of studies no doubt reflects the greater importance sometimes attributed to the ‘mass’ in Roman Catholicism. I believe it also points to an inherent advantage Catholic theologians enjoy over many of the Protestant Evangelical counterparts when it comes to correct theology. Penal substitution is not, of course, a doctrine exclusive to Protestantism. But Catholic theologians who are dissatisfied with that doctrine yet retain a proper understanding of Eucharist – as a sacrifice – have at their disposal at least the basis of an alternative, and better, theological doctrine. The particularly vehement nature of the Atonement debate in Protestant Evangelical circles may reflect the absence from their theology of any comparable liturgical reference. I have suggested that penal substitution doctrine is the substitute for a proper understanding of the eucharistic sacrifice. If that is the case, then we may have an explanation both for the impassioned adherence to that doctrine among conservatives with no decent eucharistic theology to fall back on, and the inadequacy of the main alternatives proposed by their Protestant Evangelical opponents.
Multi-models approach
It is now time to turn to those alternatives to penal substitution most commonly proposed in the Atonement literature – alternatives which I have suggested have sometimes impacted popular evangelistic presentations of the Christian fundamentals.
Broadly, these fall into two overall categories. The first I term the multi-models approach, and encompasses the range of alternatives to be found in the greater part (though by no means all) of that literature.(14) The second, or non-sacrificial approach, which I shall be discussing in subsequent chapters, is harder to identify with a particular area of the theological literature.
Of these two approaches, let me say from the start that the first (multi-models) is a complete theological blind-alley. The second (non-sacrificial) could be seen, at least in certain formulations, as a step in the direction of the approach proposed here, and my views about it are more complicated.
Authors espousing multi-models do not, in general, reject the doctrine of penal substitution outright. Rather, they present penal substitution as just one among a number of possible understandings of the Gospel-event developed over the Church’s history. In effect, they demote penal substitution from its former status as the explanation of the Christ-event to that of being just one among a number of equally valid ‘metaphors’, ‘models’ or ‘theories’. Most ‘Atonement’ studies take the form of a succession of chapters, each devoted to one of these metaphors/models. Versions of this strategy have found their way into Evangelical presentations of the Christian faith (e.g. Nicky Gumbel’s Alpha Course). I suspect, much Evangelical teaching makes some concession to it. One can easily enough allude to the possibility of other explanations, while focussing on penal substitution in a way that implies – without actually asserting or justifying – its apparently dominant status. However, a strong, ‘post-modern,’ version of the strategy makes a virtue of the plurality of explanations by arguing that a multi-faceted approach is appropriate to the nature of what is being described. The Gospel event, it is claimed, is a religious mystery that outstrips the communicative capacity of non-metaphorical speech, and requires theologians to resort to the same means of literary expression as poets and creatives. Uniting the ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ forms of the argument, however, is the refusal to grant any single metaphor or model the kind of absolute (i.e. unique and comprehensive) truth status formerly accorded to penal substitution.
Comment on this approach
I have a number of fundamental objections to any form of the multi-models strategy, strong or weak.
The first is pragmatic. Where the presentation of our faith is concerned, I seriously doubt the persuasive power of any strategy based on a multiplicity of ‘metaphors’, ‘models’ or ‘theories’. The point is frequently made that theology is not alone in the use it makes of these in communicating understanding of things that are otherwise hard to grasp. The parallel often cited is that of nuclear physics, or cosmology. We are told, for example, to think of the expanding space-time universe as like the surface of a balloon as it is being inflated. It is sometimes claimed that models may even have a role, not only in communicating, but in advancing the frontiers of scientific understanding – in quantum physics, for instance.
However, there is an important difference between physics and apologetics here. In the former case, there is unlikely to be any question in the mind of the enquirer as to actuality of the scientific findings for which an explanation is being sought. But when it comes to explaining to non-believers a reality in which they are disinclined to believe, all this talk of models simply won’t wash. The apologist’s insistence on the partial (or, at least, less than absolute) truth value of religious language will not impress non-believers with the ineffable mysteries they fail to describe; it will simply cast further doubt on the actuality of what they are talking about!
The fumblings of apologetic based on multi-models may help explain the continued popularity that the traditional presentation seems to enjoy for all its deficiencies. How much more convincing it sounds when apologists try to tell people what the Gospel event actually is, rather than equivocating about what it is like.
I suspect much of the Atonement theology mentioned above is actually more about smoothing over theological discrepancies within the community of faith than supplying the needs of enquirers and evangelists seeking a more intelligible understanding of the Atonement than penal substitution. For Christian insiders, one can certainly appreciate the appeal of a theological strategy aiming to keep die-hard traditionalists on board (‘yes, we do ascribe some value to penal substitution’), while not alienating everyone else (‘but there are plenty of other ways to think about the Christ-event if you prefer’).
The inconsistencies of the metaphors and models
However, my problems with multi-models go beyond concerns over its persuasiveness.
There is also the fundamental assumption of multi-models that there can be no one unique and comprehensive explanation of the Christ-event. There may exist some plausible justification for this claim; but I have been unable to discover it. My suspicion is the assumption owes much to the fashionable post-modern distaste for ‘literalist’ discourses, and the cultural prestige of metaphor as literary and poetic.
I am not, of course, denying a place for mystery in the Christian faith. But the challenge of genuine mysteries – the trinitarian nature of the Godhead, for example – seems to me sufficient without us inventing mysteries that aren’t really there. Given the perfectly adequate account of Christian sacrifice offered by theologians, I am disinclined to believe it constitutes one of those mysterious things.
We also need to be careful how we are using the term mystery. There is a sense in which the full significance of certain things, like the love of God, or the sufferings of Christ, will always exceed human understanding. But that is not say they are ungraspable at a notional or conceptual level, or that an at least partial sense of their significance lies altogether beyond our comprehension. The Catholic theologian, Urs von Balthasar, movingly comments:
For who would want to understand the love of God in its folly and weakness? Or who would wish to lay claim to any other course of action than hanging on the lips of God, whose word remains inseparably connected with his historic Cross and Resurrection, and keeping silence. (Balthasar, pp.82-3)
For all that, Balthasar does not ‘keep silence’. In fact, the book from which these lines come exemplifies what can be both cogently and usefully said – without recourse to metaphors and models – about these ultimately unfathomable things.
The most serious charge against multi-models, however, is that it misrepresents the models and metaphors in which it deals.
Let us begin by making a distinction between the claims that the Scriptural record itself makes about the Gospel event and those subsequently made by the models and metaphors. So far as Scripture itself is concerned, it would be hard to argue its claims are inconsistent; but Scripture does not provide us with the comprehensive explanation of the Gospel event that we are seeking. That is why – at least from the time of St Anselm – Christians in need of an adequate account of their faith for the purposes of evangelism have felt compelled to supply the deficiencies of the biblical record by developing doctrines in a manner that may be based on Scripture, but goes well beyond anything it asserts explicitly. Much the same occurs in the case of the development by the early church of a trinitarian theology. The difference is that, where its soteriology is concerned, the church never arrived at the kind of happy synthesis that we find in the Nicaean and Athanasian creeds. So it is that we are left with, on the one hand, statements of the NT, which, though arguably not irreconcilable with each other, do not add up to a comprehensive account of the Gospel event, on the other, accounts of the Gospel event that Christians have developed on the basis of those statements, which, while, in many cases satisfyingly comprehensive, are not mutually consistent.
This becomes evident, when we examine with real attention the contents of the ragbag of Atonement theory.
For a start, most adherents of satisfaction doctrines, such as penal substitution, have never regarded their account of the Gospel event as just one among a number of models. This becomes obvious when we read contemporary defences of penal substitution by its genuine advocates. (See, for example, Jeffrey, Ovey & Sachs, Pierced for our Transgressions.)
The same can be said of serious expositions of the moral influence theology in its various guises. For its serious proponents, the whole point of moral influence – and its difference from penal substitution – lies in the fact that the transformation God works through Christ is a transformation in our hearts, not a transformation in the outward conditions of our relationship with God, such as the payment of a moral debt. On this view, moral debt has no existence outside our subjectivity – which is why no outward sacrifice is needed in order to remedy it. The crucial issue here concerns the epistemological status of the transformation – on whether it is wholly subjective (moral influence) or necessarily objective (penal substitution). Given that it cannot consistently be both, the views of moral influence and penal substitution are incompatible.
Now, of course, proponents of penal substitution will generally also believe that in the phenomenon (as opposed to the theory) of moral influence. They do not generally deny that the Gospel event works on a subjective level; they merely insist that it also works on an objective level (something that moral influence theory denies). So, they will find a place for scriptural texts such as Christ’s injunction ‘to take up our cross and follow me’, which are, from their perspective, perfectly compatible with other scriptural texts that speak of Christ ‘bearing the penalty of our sins’. However, the proponents of moral influence are not just claiming that the Gospel event works through moral influence; they are claiming that it works only through moral influence, and rejecting penal substitution on that basis. So, it is pure obfuscation to argue that just because the two theories claim some of the same things, and respect the same biblical texts, they are, in any degree, mutually compatible!
The other main category of theory I shall consider here is the one on which my alternative presentation is based. A list of authors and works was given in the previous post. For want of a better description, let us call it the sacrificial approach.
From what true advocates of this approach have themselves said of its relation to other approaches it is evident such an understanding of the Gospel-event is unlikely to be reconcilable with that of penal substitution (or moral influence, for that matter). For, according to proponents of the sacrificial view, those other theories (including penal substitution and moral influence) only came into existence at all because Christians, living in an age far removed from biblical times when the cultic practice of sacrifice had become obsolete, no longer retained much sense of what sacrifice originally meant for the writers of the New Testament, and consequently misunderstood it.(15) If, as the sacrificial approach claims, such recent models as penal substitution and moral influence are indeed a misunderstanding, it follows that the sacrificial approachwill not be consistent with them. Yes, the NT language of cultic sacrifice on which sacrificial theology is based can, without inconsistency, be combined with the language of vicarious punishment or ‘taking up our cross’. But the sacrificial theories based on that language maintain an understanding of sacrifice fundamentally at odds with what these models presuppose.
In view of these incompatibilities, should we just stick to the Scriptural language, and avoid, as one recent theologian has put it, ‘pressing metaphors by making them “walk on all fours”’?(16)
That is, of course, an option. Indeed, there would be much to recommend this minimalist strategy of interpretation, if it were possible to deduce an adequate theology of the Gospel-event from the ipsissima verba of the New Testament. Given, however, that this cannot be done, the practice of theological extrapolation we find in Atonement theology is not the expression of something unjustifiably wayward (as talk of ‘pressing’ of metaphors tends to suggest). It’s something more akin to the motivation that drove Christians of the earliest centuries to develop a trinitarian theology – an urgent and entirely comprehensible need on the part of Christian orthodoxy to give an account of itself to the world. The scandal – if scandal there is – lies not in the impulse to develop a comprehensive model, but in the failure of contemporary theology, with the Spirit’s leading, to arrive at an enduring consensus – even to the extent of what was achieved by the creedal formulations of earlier centuries in trinitarian doctrine.
Sadly, as we have already pointed out, the failure to agree a sense leads inevitably to the suspicion on the part of Christianity’s interlocutors that there is ultimately no sense to be made. It is no condemnation of Christian apologetic itself to say that it should play to its strengths; the intellectual muddle of multi-models is a theological blind alley any evangelist would do well to avoid.
(14) Green & Baker, Recovering the Scandal of the Cross (2000); Hans Boersma, Violence, Hospitality and the Cross (2006); Stephen Finlan, Problems with the Atonement (1999); Final, Options on the Atonement (2007); Colin Gunton, The Actuality of the Atonement (2003); Paul Fiddes, Past Event and Present Salvation (1989); Gerald Collins, Jesus our Redeemer (2007).
(15) FCN Hicks, The Fullness of Sacrifice (1930); Godrey Ashby, Sacrifice: Its Nature and Purpose (1988); Frances M. Young, Sacrifice and the Death of Christ (1975)
(16) Gordeon Fee, ‘Paul and the Metaphors for Salvation’, in Stephen Davis et al., The Redemption (2006), p. 65