Substitutionary atonement revisited
Barnabas62
Shipmate, Host Emeritus
The Hosts may never forgive me!
One of the longest threads ever in Purgatory on the old Ship was Christus Victor, which started off as a thread on Christus Victor, but became mainly about the atonement and the 'sins' of Penal Substitutionary Atonement. 69 pages of argument!
Now I really do not want to revisit that. I believe in Substtutionary Atonement (without the P) and mentioned it in the recently closed Epiphanies thread on Hell. And got some challenging opinions. So, greatly daring, I've decided to open this thread to see whether it might start a discussion.
To give it some focus, I said the key scripture was 2 Corinthians 5 v 14-21 and in particular v21.
So, what do you think of Substitutionary Atonement. Not PSA! Forget about the P! Does it make sense today?
One of the longest threads ever in Purgatory on the old Ship was Christus Victor, which started off as a thread on Christus Victor, but became mainly about the atonement and the 'sins' of Penal Substitutionary Atonement. 69 pages of argument!
Now I really do not want to revisit that. I believe in Substtutionary Atonement (without the P) and mentioned it in the recently closed Epiphanies thread on Hell. And got some challenging opinions. So, greatly daring, I've decided to open this thread to see whether it might start a discussion.
To give it some focus, I said the key scripture was 2 Corinthians 5 v 14-21 and in particular v21.
. In traditional Protestant thinking, this passage was always described as the Great Exchange. But ideas have moved on.21 God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
So, what do you think of Substitutionary Atonement. Not PSA! Forget about the P! Does it make sense today?
Comments
An interesting historical phenomenon.
God reveals God's self precisely where human wisdom expects God least, on a cross, in weakness, suffering and apparent failure
2 Corinthians 5:14–21 fits in with the theology of the cross because it shows God reconciling the world not by power, punishment or moral improvement, but by self giving love
I think the difference is substitutionary atonement sees humanity alienated from God and needs reconciliation, but the theology of the cross, but theology of the cross sees the problem is deeper, Humanity is blind to God, curved in on itself, and addicted to self justification. The cross is not just a solution, but a revelation. For Luther, the cross is not primarily a transaction but a theological earthquake. The great exchange is not just a transaction, but a self giving union.
I understand it to be orthodox and correct. There may be many more aspects of it, but certainly this is one of them. And I don’t think, whether it is today or a thousand years ago or a thousand years from now, the time changes anything.
Firstly, I think Penal Substitutionay Atonement overlooks a very simple point from the 2 Corinthians v 14-21 text. It’s these verses.
God is not reconciling Himself to us. He is reconciling us to Him. God grieves what sin does to us, who He loves, the harm it causes to ourselves and others, and most of all that it separates us from Him.
How do we know this is God’s heart? Well, from perhaps the most famous atory in the gospels; the Prodigal Son. The father is grieved by the son’s separation, lostness and profligacy, but never ceases to love him. And is filled with joy by his return, his desire to be reconciled.
The penal thing which is most clear from the story of the cross is that Jesus was undeservedly and cruelly punished by people. That is what touches the heart.
Still, why was it necessary? Well, we have the word of the risen Jesus on the Emmaeus Road that it was.
Do I fully understand that? No. Elsewhere, Paul says it is foolishness. But he also observes that it is divine foolishness, wiser than the greatest human wisdom.
Best I can do. I’m convinced.
It's the whole of the 'Christ Event' - the Incarnation, Christ's earthly ministry and moral teachings, his atoning death and glorious resurrection, his Ascension and continuous intercession- and yes his presence with us in 'word and sacrament' (however understood) and the work of the Holy Spirit in us, through us and beyond us - and his coming again in glory and the final consummation of all things - as in 1 Corinthians 15.
It may be my residual evangelical Protestant heritage but I don’t have an issue with the substitutionary aspect as outlined here by @Barnabas62. Wiser minds than mine have wrestled with these things.
Neither do I see it as competing with @Gramps49's erudite exposition of Luther's 'Theology of The Cross' which seems perfectly compatible to me with a Patristic and Big O Orthodox take on these things.
As @Lamb Chopped wrote on the previous thread, the various 'models' we use can overlap and complement each other.
I'm not sure how useful it is to try and 'fillet' these things down into bite-size chunks although we have a natural tendency to do that of course.
I think the problems start if we make any one model the dominant paradigm - and that doesn't just apply to the atonement but to almost any theological issue we may discuss.
These things are too vast to pin down into one model or 'theory.'
I’m reaching back to a 4th century homily (Homily XI) which contains an observation on 2 Corinthians 5 v 21. The Homily was written by St John Chrysostom, much revered within Orthodoxy for many of his writings. So he is not commenting as someone from my Protestant tradition, but more than a thousand years before.
And let’s extract this part.
He is seeking to explain what it means to say that “God made him sin, who knew no sin”.
The well beloved son is substituted for the malefactor, to atone for the malefactor’s sins.
So that’s the substitution I see. But if you don’t like the traditional word, I’m happy with vicarious as an alternative.
By an image here I mean a use of concepts to elicit an emotional or spiritual reaction, such as Jesus' comparison of God to an unjust judge. A model is an attempt at intellectual exploration.
——-
Not related to this, though magic is involved in a different way (but in this case from fiction, rather than real practice or legend), am I the only one who occasionally, when seeing the words “substitutionary atonement“ finds themselves hearing the song from bedknobs and broomsticks, “substitutiary locomotion“? 🎶
As I’ve said earlier, what is clear is that it was human beings who did the punishing.
Sure, we can stretch words for purpose. All I’m trying to demonstrate is that substitutionary or vicarious atonement is there in the text and that has been seen that way for a very long time. Nobody has to go along with it if they prefer other understandings.
And I’ll bow out for a while. To see what others see.
I'm not accusing you of doing so but I do find with some (I said some) Protestant handling of Patristics that there can be a degree of selective cherry-picking going on.
So, for instance, I've seen some particularly uber-conservative neo-Calvinist types seizing gleefully on a quote from St John Chrysostom or St Iranaeus of Lyon or ... to back up a 16th century position on something or other, ignoring a quote a few paragraphs later which may suggest the opposite.
I think there is an equal and opposite mistake made by arch-traditionalists in Orthodox - and possibly RC? - circles to regard the Fathers (and Mothers) as uni-vocal and to mine their writings for proof-texts as fundamentalists do with the scriptures.
Emphases can vary. It's clear, for instance, that both RCs and Protestants put more weight on St Augustine of Hippo than the Orthodox do, even though the Orthodox would include his writings in the 'canon' as it were, of Patristic material.
As far as St John Chrysostom goes, I think we'd have to take the 'aggregate' of his references to the atonement rather than a few quotes in isolation, and indeed alongside the main tenor of Patristic commentary.
I'm not suggesting that you, as a Protestant small t tradition Christian don't have the 'right' to quote or interpret Patristic passages because you aren't formally linked into Big T Tradition.
No, these things are 'open source' as it were and a legacy for all of us.
But in approaching a passage like the one you've quoted I'd be asking:
- What did this mean at the time?
- How does it fit with the rest of what Chrysostom wrote on this issue?
- What was the prevailing understanding then and now?
And so on.
As far as I know none of the Seven Ecumenical Councils pronounced any definitive view of the atonement as the correct model or models as it were.
For all I know a future Ecumenical Council may do so. In 500 years time ...
I don't know whether any of the 21 Councils recognised as authoritative by Rome have attempted an 'authoritative' definition either.
I would imagine that some Protestant confessions and individual denominational 'statements of faith' may well have done. In fact, I know of some at a micro-level.
I'd be prepared to accept that a vicarious or substitutionary concept is there in Chrysostom, alongside other models, but unless we had plenty of simular quotes elsewhere then I think it's a bit of a stretch to posit this as proof that this was how it was widely understood.
I think @Dafyd's point is apposite here.
FWIW the dominant atonement model the Fathers seem to have used is the Ransom theory with its sometimes grotesque imagery of the Cross as 'bait' to 'hook' Satan.
That seems to have dropped away over time. I don't come across it in my own circles. If anything we don't really spend a great deal of time 'under the bonnet' (hood), fiddling about to see how these things work.
That's a very Western approach... 😉
Whether we are 'Eastern', 'Western' or all stations in between let's live in the good of what God in Christ has done for us and give Him the praise and glory - Father, Son and Holy Spirit - One God forever praised both now and forever and unto the ages of ages. Amen!
I know I am being very un-Pauline, and indeed rather against the references to the Son of Man being lifted up, but "denying [one]self, taking up [one's] cross and following Christ" is one of those verses which just hits for me, and knocks everything else aside, especially when taken with the whole story of the incarnation.
In my own Tradition there is a lot of emphasis on 'taking up one's cross.' Heck, when I complained to one priest I know - not my parish priest - how raw I was feeling after my recent relationship break-up he made an observation about bearing my cross. When I observed how there would have been various trials and difficulties had the relationship continued, he wryly observed, 'That would have been another cross to bear.'
Fortunately, he knows me well enough that he could get away with a comment like that but equally it's true that a 'cross' lies before us whatever direction we take.
I don't think that the traditional 'atonement' models focus exclusively on the cross - they are all seen in the context of the Incarnation and everything that flows from that. 'Whatever is not assumed cannot be healed,' as St Gregory Nazianzus put it.
Christ assumed our humanity.
The only atonement model that focuses overwhelmingly on the crucifixion I think is PSA - but even there many of its proponents are far more nuanced than the standard caricature.
Heck, I think I've shared this story before, but I remember attending the Christmas Day service at a Baptist chapel in South Wales where the minister whisked us away from 'cradles and Wise men' to 'a hill outside Jerusalem, three crosses silhouetted against the sky ...'
What about the intervening 33 years? How about rejoicing in the Nativity? Celebrating the Incarnation?
I can remember seeing some very un-Orthodox posts from ostensibly Orthodox posters here in the past which seemed to run to the equal and opposite error that the crucifixion wasn't in the least important.
It's one of these both/and things.
We can hold to a view of the cross and the atonement that doesn't become overly juridical and all about 'satisfaction' and obviating the wrath of God.
'God in Christ was reconciling the whole world to himself ...'
I wonder how Chrysostom would have interpreted Galatians 3:13
FWIW, while I know thats an idea out there in some corners of Christianity, I’ve never actually encountered it being taught in any aspect of church I’ve been part of. It’s simply foreign to me.
And again, I agree, both with that being Paul’s take and with the substance.
A few other random and mostly undeveloped thoughts on my part:
The key to understanding the book of Hebrews for me is Heb 2:14-15
“He shared in our flesh and blood… so that through death He might destroy the one who has the power of death… and free those who were held in slavery by fear.”
This tells me Christ enters death and destroys it from within. We are now free from fear. Christ shares our condition.
St John Chrystostom does address Galatians 3 v 13 and you can find what he says in this New Advent link.
It’s somewhat unexpected! He actually refers to two different curses under the Law.
I’ll leave it up to you to make of it what you like. I think it’s both penal and substitutionary, but not in the way you might expect.
I’m off on holiday in a couple of days so I won’t participate in any discussions.
Gamaliel is right I think. St John Chrysostom’s thinking about the atonement seemed to embrace a number of different models. Here, he seems to be PSA-like. But that’s not the whole story.
It's certainly true that both the Reformers and the 'Counter-Reformers' if you like were steeped in the Fathers in a way that few of us are today. I think though, and I'm no expert, that the Fathers thought in a somewhat different way to the 'Medieval Schoolmen' and Renaissance thinkers - although there are common threads of course.
I suspect St John Chrysostom would have been puzzled, for instance, by references to different 'atonement models'.
I'm not sure he'd have thought about it in that kind of way.
I also suspect that @Gramps49's rather 'oppositional' approach is something of an anachronism too.
'St John Chrysostom says ... but Luther says ...' as though Luther trumps the former in some way, as though Chrysostom has to give way to Luther and not the other way round ... 😉
No, seriously, what I'm saying is that we shouldn't try to 'proof-text' Chrysostom or any of the other Fathers for that matter.
What we have to do, as with Luther, Calvin, the Wesleys Aquinas or anyone else - Protestant, RC, Orthodox - is look at the aggregate of what they wrote and taught and not select those bits that most accord with what we happen to think.
That might sound odd coming from a Big T dude like me but it's a fair principle, I think.
Just because Luther or Calvin or Anselm or Aquinas or Barth or whoever else isn't part of Big O Orthodox Tradition doesn't mean we shouldn't hear them out.
Chrysostom is very important of course but he doesn't have the last word on any matter just as Luther doesn't in the Lutheran tradition or Calvin in the Reformed churches.
So I’d also say the answer to your question requires first clarifying what is meant by Hell.
I’d also question whether people here have been talking about “atonement from sin.” That seems to me a pretty restrictive and maybe even off-the-mark view. What I’ve seen discussed here include atonement being about overcoming estrangement and/or death.
I suppose my question is to what end, @Nick Tamen? What is the value and/or purpose of atonement beyond one's own understanding that one's sins had been atoned?
How does this discussion move beyond the 'how many angels can dance on the head of a pin" category?
In the ritual sense (rather than “the government needed a scapegoat, so…”), I think it’s a perception of metaphysical reality which both ancient Jews and Pagans understood, and that Jesus fulfills.
Still, "Jew" and "Pagan" are Christian categories, specifically post-Roman Empire.
I'm wondering if this is a Christian fetish, as someone alluded above, or if it's tapping into something deeper in the human consciousness. It's tempting for some of us to assume our own culture norms are universal, or to deny our own norms out of an false humility. I'm wondering if there's an honest way out of that temptation.
I don’t understand. If we believe Christianity is true, that the God Who made all of reality and time and space and atoms and life became man, then the principle would even be deeper than human consciousness or human norms (or humans, hominids, vertebrates, organic life, inorganic entities, etc.) in the first place. And the Christian categories of Jew and Pagan (or, if you prefer, Jew and non-proselyte Gentile) would be accurate categories, surely?
Perhaps the “scapegoat” concept would be related to what Charles Williams calls the Way of Exchange…
For fruitful discussion, I don’t need to agree with what you mean by Hell, but I do need to understand what you mean by Hell. Or, for that matter, what you do or don’t mean by “atonement” . . . .
That starting place makes little sense to me, I’m afraid. I don’t think in terms of “sins having been atoned” (or “atoned for”). People are atoned—“at-one’d”—with one another. Atonement as I understand it isn’t about forgiveness of sins, at least not for its own sake, but rather about restoration of right relationship. Sin matters because it is a sign or symptom of broken relationship.
Personally, I don’t find the idea of the scapegoat particularly relevant to concepts of Christ and reconciliation/atonement; it seems to me like mixing up of types, furthered, I suspect, by the word “atonement.” I mean, I won’t deny there may be some correlations, but they seem rather incidental to me.
If the crucifixion had been on the Day of Atonement, and perhaps if Jesus had been identified from time to time as the “Goat of God” (I do actually kind of love that
I suppose I'm thinking in Freudian terms, that there's a kind of emotional "accounting" to people. People have desires, and unfulfilled desires will look for outlets. If there isn't a simple outlet, people will seek an alternative one. I think you can see children do this.
Heck, I've watched cats do this. When one of our cats gets worked up, she'll swipe at the nearest target no matter what she's mad at. She's simply mad and wired to lash out. Scapegoating is, I think, kind of like that.
I was wondering whether the practice of scapegoating exists across cultures that never made contact with Christianity. And I am indeed a Christian, but I have a good enough imagination to wonder about non-Christian cultures.
And like @Nick Tamen , I'm not persuaded that the crucifixion is best understood as a scapegoating mechanism. I think mimetic theory (thanks Rene Girard) is a fascinating construction and one I use from time to time, but I think it's a horrible case for Christ, and not one I find necessarily compelling as a fundamental narrative for humanity, even if it does capture a scary volume of ugly human behavior.
In general, I try to tread lightly around grand narratives, it's healthier to treat them like intellectual toys.
Wait, are we talking about two different kinds of “scapegoat” here? I’m thinking of the ritual kind…
Am I hearing it right that you are collapsing a sacrament into a biological statement?
I don't think the church has ever said that.
I believe it is an act in which God gives God's self to us through material signs--bread, wine, water, oil, community. The Eucharist is not about cannibalism, it is Christ giving his life to us in a way that is mysterious, embodied, and deeply relational.
Not at all. Arguably even the opposite. I’m talking about something much more like magic. Or as some spell it to distinguish it from stage magic (though I do not, as I think it’s pretentious), “magick.”
One could even argue that (ordinary human, non-Eucharistic) cannibalism is a dark shadow of the metaphysical principle that Jesus feeding us His Body and Blood embodies perfectly.
Yes, exactly, wholly agreed. ❤️
Does anyone remember InGoB?
German Shipmate. RC from a Buddhist background.
He used to insist that the sacraments were 'magickal'.
I do believe they are efficascious and that God works in and through them but I'm not convinced that 'magical-thinking' helps.
I know what @ChastMastr is driving at, I think but we shouldn't be 'reductionist' about these things. Say the magic words and ...
I'm not sure how many posts it's going to take to get an answer to a question instead of qualifications of questions asked, but here's hoping.
Is there such a thing as a working definition of atonement? Do we even know what it means? Or is it an eye of the beholder thing?
I think someone already answered this. At its core. Atonement literally means at one ment, It is the how that we will be discussing from here to eternity.
Well, my dictionary says:
- reparation for an offense or injury : SATISFACTION
- the reconciliation of God and humankind through the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ
- obsolete : RECONCILIATION
As I’ve said, I tend to have the second meaning in mind—reconciliation between God and humanity—if I use the word.//a story of sin and atonement
//He wanted to find a way to make atonement for his sins.
Oh, I’m not being reductionist about this at all. I’m talking about something much deeper than the idea of “saying the magic words” – arguably a whole worldview about metaphysics and the supernatural and what have you that just isn’t currently trendy in our modern society. A worldview of intrinsic meaning within everything, everywhere you look, rather than just “stuff.” But then, I think animism is closer to the truth than our modern materialism…
Whatever happened to IngoB?
@Gramps49 is right, however we understand it, the atonement is all about reconciliation and recapitulation - the recovery of something that has been lost.
It's about the restorationist of right relationships.
'God and sinners reconciled,' as the Christmas carol has it.
It can't be reduced to a set of soundbites.
He is right. It’s reasonable to say his interpretations may remind us of later models. But it is wrong, anachronistic, to infer, even inadvertently, that he knew them. Apologies for my part in that.
But you can trace it through many of the church fathers. Ignatius of Antioch said God's power is revealed in suffering
Irenaeus taught that Christ saves by entering every state of human life, including death.
Athanasius said that God defeats death by dying.
Gregory of Nyssa said the Deity was hidden under our weakness,
Cyrill of Alexandria said the one who suffers on the cross is God the Word, not a separate human victim.
I could go on.
But it brings up an interesting question. Were the church fathers more inspired than Luther, or any modern theologian, or even a simple layperson?
I think I understand what Chastmastr is driving at, though I probably can't articulate it any better. But IMHO the usual term for this is "sacramental" (duh, LC!). It refers to something that "just works" in a way God understands though we do not, and that's tied up with his promises and his faithfulness--and that gives us life.
I'm really not offended by the cannibalism reference, but I tend to go more for the medical model where blood literally provides the "food" necessary for each cell in the body--and the cells here are us, the members of the body of Christ. Somehow in a way no human being is going to explain adequately, the Eucharist does provide us with life--with what we need to live in Christ. I'm a "real presence" believer, and so I don't feel any need to call this a mere analogy. I think it goes deeper than that, to the very core of reality.
And that's true IMHO for the atonement itself, though again, none of us are going to manage to explain it even near-adequately--there's a reason Scripture gives us so many different angles on it. The so-called archaic meaning of "at-one-ment" is something I thought was a preacher's gimmick till I read Julian and realized it's actually true etymology--and God knows, it's good theology--but the current more-common idea of "making up" for something bad has kind of taken over the word in modern discourse. And that's a shame, as at-one-ment--that is, bringing humanity and God back into harmony--is probably a better understanding of what Christ was up to than the "making up for" idea.
In case you'd missed it, I've made a number of positive comments on Luther's 'take' on this, which I'd see very much in line with the Patristic legacy.
What I was querying was the way you appeared to be setting Luther over against Chrysostom. A kind of, 'Chrysostom said X but Luther said Y, therefore that trumps Chrysostom...'
I don't see these things in terms of the Fathers being more 'inspired' than anyone else. Neither the Fathers nor Luther wrote 'holy writ' as it were.
The Fathers do take precedence over later theologians in the Orthodox approach, on account of their antiquity and that they thrashed out some of the positions we regard as authoritative. That doesn't mean that we ignore later writers and commentators.
Nor does it mean we take a 'fundamentalist' approach to the Fathers - although some act that way. Nor does it mean we dismiss modern theologians or lay people or what a little old lady might say to us at church next Sunday.
We would see the Fathers as foundational figures of course. Their writings are part of Holy Tradition but they aren't 'Holy Writ' any more than you would consider Luther's writings as being on a par with scripture.
A common Orthodox view of Luther would be that he was right to challenge Rome but should have done so by coming to us ... 😉
A more nuanced view would be that he was certainly right to protest but ended up throwing some 'baby' out with the bathwater.
I like Luther and not only because of his fart gags.
But that's by the by.
I'm not sure I've answered your question but then from an Orthodox perspective it's a bit of an odd question to ask.
I certainly wouldn't answer it as Ivan The Terrible is said to have answered a Lutheran pastor, by laying his cheek open with his riding crop.
The story goes that in East Prussia, Ivan encountered a Lutheran minister for the first time. Intrigued, he asked the man some questions. He'd heard that Luther had defied the Pope - all well and good from Ivan's perspective. So he probed more closely as to the doctrines and issues involved.
Oh yes, the Lutheran minister told him, Luther was a holy and inspired man, on a par with the Apostles -
Slash! - Ivan laid his cheek open.
He wasn't called 'Terrible' for nothing. Complete psycho.
Would I put the Fathers 'above' Luther? Yes. Does that mean I disrespect Luther? No.
Does it mean I don’t believe God can 'speak' through modern theologians - whether RC, Protestant or Orthodox - through lay people, through non-Christians ... no of course it doesn't.
Dorothy L. Sayers and G.K. Chesterton worked with both kinds of mystery!