@Dennis
Dexterslab1976 comes from the great cartoon Dexter’s laboratory, and 1976 is my birth year. I have been using that name for a very long time.

I read the article you posted by William lane Craig. I have read a good bit of his stuff. He is great with apologetics, philosophy, and we are both molinist. Well, I don’t try to classify myself like that but molinism seems to be the closest to what I believe when dealing with free will vs predestined. When it comes to theology I tend to read others. He used the idea of being “imputed” to help prove his point and most of the time I feel that “imputed” tends to be read back into the Bible because of a preconceived belief. For instance even though it isn’t in the Bible, some people believe that Adam’s sin is imputed to everyone through birth this leads to the idea that we are all born with a sin against us making us totally depraved or if a baby dies before being baptized that baby could end up in Limbo. I think N.T. Wright does a good job dealing with the “imputed” righteousness of Christ and the same principle can be applied when dealing with God imputing to Jesus our sin and guilt. So, I don’t agree with Craig that our sin is imputed into Christ. The explanations that I have given for the phrases found in the New Testament can show that atonement has already been made without the idea that our sin is imputed into Christ on the cross.

I will admit there is one verse that gave me trouble. Mark 10:45 “For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.” The question that comes up is who Jesus is paying the ransom too. I have heard he is paying a ransom to God, the Devil, sin, or death. I want to say, but I’m not 100% sure, that PSA states Jesus pays the ransom to God.

I have mentioned earlier the Greek word for ransom, lytron, is used in the context of redemption, and after looking into it more I found a good verse that will help explain ransom a little more. Isaiah 51:11 “Then let those ransomed by the Lord return and come to Zion with singing and with everlasting joy overwhelm them; let grief and groaning flee.” There are a few other times in the Old Testament where ransom is being used as a way to save someone from death, or paying a ransom for someone’s life. Hosea 13:14 says that God will ransom them from the grave. Going by Isaiah 51 and Hosea 13 I don’t think God can be paying a ransom to God, this can also apply if we believe Jesus is the incarnate of God. God is paying a ransom but to who? To be ransomed is to be released from some sort of prison or bondage. It does seem that God is paying a ransom to death, but I don’t think that is possible since death is really just a state and not a being of some sort. I don’t think God owes to anyone, except to fulfill the promise of the covenant. My conclusion would be that when Jesus, like in the Old Testament, used the word “ransom” he was using a metaphor to describe what was happening in Isaiah 51. He was redeeming his people from bondage, and restoring paradise. This also meant they were being granted salvation. If we look before verse 11 we will see that the Lord is going to comfort Zion, make her wilderness like Eden, her desert like a garden, and there will be joy. This restoration the Lord is bringing is the salvation of Zion, as mentioned a few times in this same chapter. When his people are being redeemed they are receiving salvation. To ransom seems to be part of the process of salvation. Ransom is just another way of saying we are free from the world and we know belong to Christ. As I have shown before all of this was taking place before his death.

Hey Dexterslab! I just noticed William Lane Craig made some comments on his question of the week email/web post. It's at http://www.reasonablefaith.org/what-dyi ... -sins-mean. (I'd sign up for his emailed question of the week if I were you. He has some great insights and powerful apologetic arguments.) You may find this informative; do take a look. I'm sorry I still haven't been able to give the time to focus on any more of the details of your arguments. Just too much going on for me this month. So this might be my last response unless I get a windfall of extra free time. Do spend time in prayer asking God's Spirit to lead you to a fuller understanding of just what the biblical teaching about atonement really means. How can anyone go wrong if they do that? Say, just out of curiosity, does the moniker dexterslab refer to something like Dexter's lab? Our prayers are with you as you continue to seek the fullness of God's truth. Keep Jim Walton's web site here in prayer too, if you get a chance. He's doing a great work helping Christians and non-Christians grow closer to Christ.

Just a few thoughts for now. Possibly more later.

I definitely do not see the principle of justice as something outside of God. It’s at the core of God’s very being and nature.

I cannot demonstrate that all possible nonPSA views cannot be necessary, that only a PSA view gives us a reason that God had to incarnate and suffer and die to bring us back to God. Yet when I look at all of the possible nonPSA views, they all seem so unnecessary. I talked with a Muslim scholar once. His view, which reflects the view of many Muslims and other theists, was that there is something presumptuous about telling God that he can’t do something. God has all power, absolutely and unconditionally. That means God can just tell someone that they are forgiven and that’s it. The Christian view is, or implies, that sin is a reality that cannot be removed by merely saying it is gone, even if it is God who says it is gone. In the garden, when Jesus was begging his Father to take this cup from him, wouldn’t the Father have done so if he could have? It’s not so much that God cannot do some things, it’s rather that he can do them but to do them he may have to use certain means. God couldn’t bring us salvation without Jesus dying.

If the Ninevites had been forgiven by something other than Jesus’ death as you claim, then again, it was not necessary for Jesus to die. Everyone could be saved that way and God would have chosen not to incarnate and die.

You asked several times, “If the Father could have done it any other way wouldn’t he have?” and most of your comments seem to be centered on this question. I can’t answer that. I don’t know what God could have done or should have done. I don’t think anyone can really answer this kind of question. The way you ask the question and define PSA, it seems you are suggesting that God has to obey some standard of justice that is outside of God. I hope that isn’t what you are suggesting. It just seems that way. All I’m doing is just trying to understand the language that was used to describe exactly what happened.

When phrases like “dying for our sins” or “becoming a curse” are used, I can easily take them to mean something different than the definition you use. I used Luther as an example to show how a slightly different angle could give a very different meaning. You asked was Luther able to provide salvation. Well, if you look at what he was trying to do the answer is yes. Salvation doesn’t have to mean to die on the cross. It also means to save from harm or ruin. We can see that what Luther was trying to do by breaking away from the Roman Catholic Church was prevent our ruin. He was trying to liberate us, and was willing to die for his cause. He became the representative of the Protestant movement, was willing to suffer for that cause, and others would not have to suffer because of what he did. He not only opened the way for others to follow in his footsteps, he was willing to take the persecution(give up his life, shed his blood) as the leader of this movement, face the wrath of the Roman Catholic Church, so others would be able to worship in freedom and not face the wrath he faced. (I know it can be argued that Luther didn’t really do all of this, but this is just an example and it can be applied to others) You may not agree this is what Paul meant by using this type of language, but there are other theories of atonement that believe this is what Paul was trying to express.

A representative just means a representative figure. As Adam is representative, so Jesus is representative. It doesn’t mean that Jesus took our place so God could finally forgive us. This representative idea is new to me, so I would rather you read what others have to say about it. I could be explaining it wrong. I think the example I used with Luther might help show what I mean by representative.

You also have to keep in mind how I use “wrath.” I don’t use it as some physical punishment that we can see at the moment. I think the best way to explain it is to say we are all in a current state of wrath. When I gave the example of Adam and Eve, I said wrath was what resulted from their disobedience. They were cut off and no longer able to commune with God. Their relationship was broken. This is the wrath of God as I understand it. Until that relationship is restored we are in a constant state of wrath. God cannot commune with sin, so there is a separation. God’s anger towards our sin causes us to be cast out until redemption.

Was the suffering of Jesus unnecessary? I would have to answer that with a yes and no. A soldier who joins a war to stop an evil dictator was necessary to stop the spread of the dictator’s power but it was unnecessary if the dictator would have never started it in the first place. The soldier joined the effort because of the sin of the dictator and to stop his broken system. The sufferings of those like Bonhoeffer were necessary from the point of view of Bonhoeffer to stop Hitler. They were unnecessary looking at it years later from an outside point of view, if only Hitler would not have become a dictator or if the treaty that lead to the rise of Hitler was never put into place. Sometimes a broken system or sin has necessary results.

You assume the Ninevites were forgiven because of the future work of Jesus but you are not really basing it on anything. All we know is that forgiveness was given based on what the people did. We also know that Jesus went around forgiving the people of Israel before his death. As I mentioned in the Gospel according to Matthew, Jesus bore their diseases and took their infirmities before his death. This means what Isaiah mentioned was being fulfilled. God was establishing his Kingdom through Jesus. People were being redeemed, and forgiven. This is one of the reasons why I stated that the spread of the Kingdom was part of atonement. Jesus was announcing salvation before he was announcing the cross.

You gave many verses to back up what you believe, which is great, but I have given examples as to why these verses don’t have to point to PSA. You are asked, “But what does it mean to die on behalf of our sins if not to substitute who takes our sins upon himself on our behalf,” and I have already given another idea as to what this might mean. Even the Greek word for “bore” can mean to “lift up” or “carry to off” which shows this also doesn’t have to point to PSA. I have also shown that God didn’t need the death of Jesus to be able to forgive, which is a major hole in the definition of PSA. Even when Jesus said he has come to give his life “as a ransom for many” doesn’t have to point towards PSA. The Greek word for ransom is lytron and is used for redemption, and points more towards the liberating or redemption of Israel. My point for this short summary of these phrases is they don’t have to point towards the definition of PSA, and actually seem to fit better with what I stated about atonement. If an atonement doctrine does not include his life, death, resurrection, accession, and the spread of the Kingdom it is inadequate. It not only ignores a major focus of the Gospels but also it leaves a Church that produces inadequate Christians.

Reply
@dexterslab

Sorry I missed some of your points that answered or anticipated some of my last questions and critiques. Maybe we’ll reach more clarity if we just discuss it a little more. I also may have repeated myself somewhat in the following. Thank you for your patience.

In my thinking, the big question involves the issue of the necessity of different posited means of atonement. PSA says that God had to do it this way or we could not be reconciled to God. God’s nature is such that he would have done anything that had to be done to bring us back to himself and keep us from the hell which is alienation from God. This shows us how incomprehensibly great is the Love of God. (Please remember, whenever I speak of PSA, I do not mean that God has someone else suffer for God; God endures this pain himself. If you want to critique the whipping boy brand of PSA, I will agree with most everything you say. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit all endured the same suffering which was so great and so other than anything we endure that only God could endure it.)

But if Jesus’ death was just an example to motivate us to self-sacrifice and obedience unto death, this hardly seems worth the price God had to pay. God could motivate us in other ways. Whatever other possible view of atonement we might imagine, only PSA says that this is the only way atonement can be achieved. And this also seems to me to be clearly what Paul is saying in Galatians. If there were any other possible way, God would have taken it. Jesus pleaded with his Father to take this cup from him. Wouldn’t the Father have done this if there were any other possible way to bring about reconciliation with God?

PSA fits so perfectly with so much of the scriptural teaching of forgiveness of sin. Animal sacrifice is so easily explained by a PSA view and it is so difficult to understand given any other view. Phrases like dying or our sins and becoming a curse can easily have a PSA meaning, but it is difficult to see any other meaning that can feasibly be attached to them. If Luther became a curse for the Catholic Church, it was not in any way that provided salvation for them. He was willing to die for a cause, but neither did that cause bring salvation. His willingness stemmed from his obedience to Christ since Christ commanded him to be willing to give up his life rather than deny the truth he learned from God.

I don’t see how Luther being a representative rather than a substitute for his cause affects the argument. I’m not even sure what you mean by that. If you are saying Jesus is more of a representative than a substitute, then I would say a representative is a kind of substitute. If Jesus died as my representative, he still died in my place. If you mean representative in some other sense, please clarify.

My accusation about God being a moral monster in a nonPSA view stems from the notion that on any nonPSA view, Jesus need not have died. God could have brought about reconciliation by some other means and yet he did not. He brought about a needless agonizing suffering and death which was not the only way the greatest good God desired could be achieved. A good God would have chosen another way if it were available to him.

The moral monster accusation does not apply to the PSA view I presented because in this view it was God himself who chose to suffer and die. The accusation only applies to what I called a “whipping boy” PSA view. God chose an innocent one, Jesus, to suffer and die; Jesus did not want to but only obeyed out of obedience to the Father. If there were any other way salvation could be attained without a greater evil occurring, God should have chosen that way. Not taking that alternate route would have made God evil. But if the Father and Son are one in their Godhead, they both had eternally chosen the same thing; they both determined that it would be necessary to endure this pain should humankind fall. And they both determined that it would be worth creating a human race, and endure this pain they, the Godhead, did not want to endure, given the possibility that humankind would fall.

While on earth Jesus had his divine wisdom and power reduced such that he had now only the power and knowledge of an ordinary man. This we call the kenosis. All of his power to work miracles and his divine knowledge were given him by the Spirit when he needed it. When Jesus pleaded with God to take this cup from him, he no longer had the full knowledge of the eternal decision he had made in the depths of the Godhead, his decision to endure this pain. In the garden he knew only the part about not wanting to endure this pain. (Remember that the Father didn’t want to endure this pain either but he knew that he had to in order to attain salvation for the world.) With his limited knowledge while on earth, Jesus accepted this fate only out of obedience to the Father. He knew that though he couldn’t yet understand why the Father required this of him, his Father knew and would require only that which was absolutely necessary.

You say, “You asked why Jesus had to die. I gave a few answers and I don’t see how they make God a moral monster.”

I searched through your previous comments to find the reasons you gave that Jesus had to die. In fact I couldn’t find anything which couldn’t be shown to be completely unnecessary. Under any nonPSA view you presented, it can be shown that Jesus did not need to die. I did find you saying “Does God need the death of Jesus to be able to forgive? To me this doesn’t even sound like the God that Jesus revealed. . . . I think we only need to look at the Gospels to see this isn’t true.” So it sounds as though you are saying that Jesus did not need to die to bring atonement. If this is so, then God brought on Jesus unnecessary suffering and is a moral monster. I know God allows suffering to humanity, but as I pointed out earlier, God has reason for doing so that would not apply to Jesus.

In the case of Jonah preaching to the Ninevites, this gets into a new but related issue of how Gentiles living before the time of Christ were made righteous or acceptable before God. For that matter, were all people necessarily lost who lived before the crucifixion simply because the atonement had not yet been made? Some past theologians have considered this a serious problem especially given that the Scripture seems very clear that the OT saints are accepted by God.

My view is, first that the OT saints were accepted by God through animal sacrifice which anticipated Christ’s atonement. I don’t think there is really any problem that they might not accept that atonement once they find out what the animal sacrifice pointed to. The OT saints were accepted by God because they submitted completely to all that God asked of them and because of the objective means of reconciliation that the atonement would bring. They aren’t going to say to God, I’ve obeyed you all my life but now I won’t because I know what the sacrifices typify. They will obviously accept whatever means of atonement God tells them they must accept.

But what about the Gentiles living before Jesus? Paul said God overlooked or “winked at” (KJV) their ignorance but now calls all people to repent and that God left them witness of his existence (Ac 17.30; cf. 14.16-17). He said that God acted so as to draw people to seek him and find him (17.27-28). The implication seems very clear to me that they could find God even though they might still lack even the knowledge of the sacrifices which the Jews possessed. In Acts 10.34-35 Peter said that God accepts all people who fear or honor God and seek to do what is right. So those who seek God and those who honor God who know that God is there, so long as they follow the moral law that is written in their hearts, are accepted by God. Like the OT saints, they too must after death accept the atonement God has provided though, from the choices they had made before death, it is hardly conceivable that they will not.

So without taking this any further and getting into exclusivist/inclusivist controversies which could fill up numerous pages, let me just say that BC Gentiles, if I might call them that, could be accepted by God without knowing about or (for the time being) having Christ’s atonement. That does not mean that they can be saved without the atonement. It is the metaphysical work that the atonement accomplishes that saves anyone who is saved, and one must accept that atonement once God gives one this knowledge. Until one has this knowledge, God accepts the righteous BC Gentile because of their obedience and submission to God and because of the objective work the atonement will bring. If one is obedient before death, one will be obedient to God’s will after death when God reveals his will that one accept the atoning death of Jesus.

Likewise for the Ninevites, their repentance brought them forgiveness or atonement for their wickedness because of the future work Christ would accomplish by his death. Just because sacrifice was not mentioned in this case or in several other OT instances in which forgiveness is given does not mean it is not needed. Leviticus 17.11 makes it clear that it is always needed. If something is so categorically stated even just once, it should be obvious that when forgiveness is mentioned elsewhere, the writer will not need to repeat the fact that blood atonement is also needed.

You quote me as saying “God could have just told us to obey and repent.” Then you say that “God did, and in fact that is pretty much the entire Old Testament.”

But if that’s all there is to it, then Jesus didn’t need to come at all and die. Or he could have come and just preached obedience and repentance like any other prophet without dying an atoning death. He could have even claimed to be God incarnate and verified his claim by some other means than death and resurrection. Jesus and the apostles said more than just obey and repent; they said believe and trust in Jesus because of his atoning death. His blood is shed for the remission of sins (Mt 26.28); we are justified, accepted by God with our sins not counted against us, by his blood (Rm 5. 8-9); Messiah would have to suffer and rise from the dead (Ac 20.28); he died for our sins according to Scripture (1 Cor 15.3); we have redemption, forgiveness of sins, though his blood (Eph 1.7; Col 1.14, 20; 1 Pet 1.18-19); he was a sacrifice to God (5.2); he bore our sins in his body (2.24); he suffered for sins, the just for the unjust (3.18); he gave himself a ransom for us (1Tim 2.6); his blood cleanses us from all sin and is a propitiation for our sins (1Jn 1.7; 2.2; 4.10); he washed us of our sin and redeemed us to God by his blood (Rv 1.5; 5.9).

You say God didn’t want Jesus to suffer but it happened because of our sin. But you still cannot say that it had to happen. You haven’t shown that in your view God could not and would not have stopped it. God could have shown us our “system” was “broken” in some other way if he didn’t want Jesus to die. God gave Cain the power to “master” the sin which was “crouching at the door” seeking to have him. But once he sinned, only sacrifice could cover his sin.

You say, “I don’t think God used Jesus for ‘bringing about unnecessary and gratuitous suffering.’ I think suffering happened as a result of our sin, and Jesus died on behalf of our sins.”

But what does it mean to die “on behalf of our sins” if not to be a substitute who takes our sins upon himself on our behalf? If Jesus did not die as our substitute, then I just cannot see that God could not and would not have chosen another way to bring us salvation than to have him die this gruesome death. If God could have chosen another way to reconcile us to God which did not result in some greater evil and if God did not do so, then God was causing unnecessary and gratuitous suffering to Jesus.

I agree with much that you say. Atonement is more than just the death of Jesus, though I’m not sure how one might justify the claim that, say, the spreading of the Kingdom of God is part of the atonement.

Yes, the church often falls into an easy-believism in which one may simply say a sinner’s prayer and then go on with life as though nothing has happened. This is parallel to the Israelite sin of making animal sacrifice without true repentance and then continuing to do evil. I mentioned last time that Christians do need to become different than they were before; that they need to walk in holiness and that sin in their lives will bring judgment. Whether or not it is, as you say, a part of the atonement which brings the power to overcome sin, it is at least a special power or grace from God.

I hope you take my critique of your views as the searchings of a fellow believer simply seeking to understand the Scripture. I hope my thoughts will help to add some rational and biblical ideas to your pool of thinking as you seek to come to a more complete biblical theology. The problems with the nonPSA views you suggest make them just too difficult to accept in my view. A PSA view which sees the full Godhead as willingly enduring a suffering only God could endure because this was the only way we could be reconciled to God seems to me to answer the problems you see in PSA.

Reply
@Dennis Jensen

I will try to answer some of the main points that you mentioned to hopefully clarify somethings. The issues I don’t address were probably already dealt with in some of the longer comments.

You stated, “I know you can point to some that don’t seem to need a sacrifice, but if we dig a little deeper, I think we can see that they do.” The book of Jonah is about God sending Jonah to warn a nation to repent or they would be judged. They repented and no sacrifice was mentioned. Their reaction to God’s warning and their attitude of repentance is what caused God to change his mind. We can also see cases were Jesus had forgiven people before his death and no sacrifice was required. This leads me to believe that a sacrifice is not always needed for forgiveness. I feel being obedient, humble, and repentant is what God was looking for in these situations.

I don’t see why phrases like: dying for our sins or becoming a curse, must have a PSA meaning. It is the same as someone like Martin Luther, who knew what would happen by challenging the Catholic Church at the time. He knew that his cause might lead to great suffering, possible torture, and death. He was willing to suffer this on behalf of the cause and to shed blood for what he believed to be true. He became a curse before the Roman Catholic Church. He was the representative of that cause, and there are many scholars who argue that “representative” would fit better than “substitution.” I think these different metaphors were being used to suggest the same thing. That Jesus was redeeming Israel. Redemption meant the time was at hand for Israel to be forgiven and their God was coming to set things right. Redemption and forgiveness go together so if one was being done that means so was the other. Jesus was making atonement. He was restoring the image of God, so we could commune with God once again, and this would one day be completed. As Paul said, even creation itself is waiting to be set free from bondage.

You asked why Jesus had to die. I gave a few answers and I don’t see how they make God a moral monster. The answers I gave actually show the opposite. I began by looking at PSA from an outside point of view and how many people who think that if God needs the death of an innocent man to be able to forgive; this would make God the moral monster. You seem to be drawing some conclusions that don’t come from what I stated. You said “God could have just told us to obey and repent.” God did, and in fact that is pretty much the entire Old Testament.

I don’t think God wanted Jesus to suffer. I think it was going to happen because of our sin, and the rejection of what Jesus was saying. To show us a broken system and what would happen if you had faith in Jesus and followed his way, and this is why I think obedience is important when dealing with bondage. God telling Cain to master sin is a good way to see how sin would keep us in bondage. God did not tell Cain to make a sacrifice to be released from this sin. God told him to master it. This would mean that Cain had to change inwardly and outwardly. If Cain was obedient to what God said, then he would be released from bondage. This sin would not be able to master him and he would not be a slave to it. This is a major part of being a disciple. I don’t think God used Jesus for “bringing about unnecessary and gratuitous suffering.” I think suffering happened as a result of our sin, and Jesus died on behalf of our sins. The death and resurrection of Jesus showed God’s love for us, and it also revealed our sin.

I think you misunderstood as to what I think God’s wrath is. I never stated that all suffering is the result of God’s wrath. I was simply narrowing down what is meant by God’s wrath. I mentioned the story of Adam and Eve to show exactly what I think God’s wrath is. Adam and Eve did not die because they sinned. They died because they were banned from the Garden and had no access to the Tree of Life. They were no longer allowed to commune with God, and with no way to eat from the Tree they would die. This is what I call the wrath of God. This is God letting you suffer for the sins that you willing commit which leads to death and separation from God. In John 3 and Romans 2, we can see that wrath is used in comparison to enteral life (by eternal life I don’t mean going to Heaven after you die). We have a separation from God, which is the result of God’s wrath towards sin. Believing in Jesus repairs this separation.

You also have to remember I admitted that PSA isn’t exactly wrong. I think it needs to be reworded and it needs to include more. Atonement needs to include more than just the death of Jesus. This means atonement has to be based on his life, death, resurrection, accession into Heaven, and the spreading of the Kingdom of God. I feel any definition that does not deal with each of these is not an adequate definition. I have already mentioned that the definition of PSA can give non-Christians that wrong idea of God but it can also give Christians the wrong idea of God. I can only go by my experiences with Church, but I know this is probably very wide spread. At the end of many church services I hear an invitation to say the Sinner’s Prayer. All you have to do is say this prayer, believe Jesus died on the cross, and then you are good to go. When preaching on the Gospel, how many preachers go back and mention what Isaiah said, or even what Jesus said? Most people only focus on the death and resurrection of Jesus, and then go straight to Paul. So, much is missed when the sum of the Gospel is just the death and resurrection of Jesus. The sacrifice becomes the only focus, and not the life, accession, or the attitude we must have to live in the Kingdom. God told the people of Israel that he didn’t desire their sacrifice because they only focused on the ritual and not everything else that was supposed to come with it. Christians are doing the same exact thing.

Just a few more comments looking at your later posts, Dexter. I hope these comments might give some idea as to why people like myself find it impossible to avoid penal atonement. We need to get rid of some concepts it is associated with, but the core must remain. Paragraphs in quotations are from your posts.

The rabbis don’t like the idea of animal sacrifice because they cannot carry out sacrifices any longer and according to the Scripture that means they are still in their sins. So historically they have had to find a way to try to negate the Scriptures which say we need sacrifice. That is why they say only repentance and obedience are needed. The more obvious answer is that the animal sacrifices point to the death of the Messiah which fulfills the animal sacrifices. This keeps the integrity of the passages which say we need sacrifice and those which tell us that sacrifice is no longer allowed since the Temple is gone.

There are no sins that do not need sacrifice according to the Hebrew Scripture. I know you can point to some that don’t seem to need sacrifice, but if we dig a little deeper, I think we can see that they do. Some were forgiven before the sacrifices but that does not mean the sacrifice was not needed. Some can be forgiven in anticipation that sacrifice will still be made. Yes, repentance was always necessary before sacrifice. But the day of atonement today is not kept the way it was originally. One can’t just say that because we can’t sacrifice therefore sacrifice is not needed.

“The laying on the hands helped the person offering the animal identify with the sacrifice.”

I agree.

“To identify with the sacrifice was so the person offering the animal would think about their own death and how this could be them.”

No, to identify with the animal was to see that the animal is your substitute. Laying hands on the animal is a means of saying my sins are placed upon this animal. This is especially clear when we think of the priest speaking the sins of the people upon the animal.

“Matthew 8:17 says, 'He took our infirmities and bore our diseases.' This was happening before his death. I also don’t see this was meant to be taken literally since Jesus wasn't full of disease.”

Jesus’ suffering was suffering that only God could endure. Some speculate that his death involved a temporary metaphysical separation between the Father and Son. Whether truly metaphysical or merely moral, this indicates a death and suffering both the Father and Son endured. So the suffering and death were different and much greater than anything a human might endure. Disease and infirmity were subsumed in his unique suffering. Jesus didn’t have to actually be diseased to bear this suffering.

Dying on our behalf cannot in this context be the same as merely dying for a cause. In the context of a culture which constantly practiced animal sacrifice and had its thinking fully immersed in substitutionary assumptions, “ransom, bearing our sins, dying for our sins, becoming a curse” etc., must have a substitutionary meaning.

“What Jesus did by suffering was show what could happen if we followed his path with obedience.”

But why did he have to die? If no substitution was involved, why would God require obedience to go this far? Wouldn’t this make God an arbitrary moral monster, punishing his Son for no good reason other than that he merely wanted to have the Son to obey or he wanted to see if his Son would obey even to this extreme? I can see that God would want to see if we would obey and cling to God to this degree. We do need to be tested. It is not wrong for God to do this to us so long as God does provide compensation for all undeserved suffering we endure. But God the Father knows what the Son will do already because God knows what God would always do. We need to be tested, God does not. God is not to be tested because God cannot fail to do what is right and good.

“As a result of his obedience, even when faced with death, God will be faithful to his promise and deliver his people from bondage.”

Why? What does his obedience have to do with our deliverance from bondage? Actually nothing. Only substitution makes any sense so as to provide a connection here. Without this we simply have God making an arbitrary and gratuitous promise that if Jesus obeys, everyone else is set free.

“Jesus is showing us that if we have faith, and live a life of obedience and repentance, we no longer face the wrath of God or the consequences of sin.”

But if this is all God wants, he didn’t have to have Jesus “show” us anything by being “obedient unto death”; he could have just told us to repent and obey. His death was unnecessary. Think of the suffering that could have been avoided. Should we think God just likes the idea of bringing about unnecessary and gratuitous suffering?

For your post of 4Ap15:

You may notice already that some of us who accept penal substitution (PSA) disagree with each other on certain points. (For example, I disagree with certain Reformed theologies which say that PSA should not leave the ball in our court, as Bob puts it.) With all that we say we hope that even though you will inevitably end up disagreeing with some of us on some point(s), you will see some core concepts in PSA that you agree with.

I do think that sacrificial atonement for sin is intimated in God’s acceptance of Able’s blood sacrifice over Cain’s non-blood sacrifice as well as in God providing animal skins as covering for Adam and Eve’s nakedness. (I’ve talked more about this earlier.) Leviticus 17.11 says the blood makes atonement in the sacrifices because of the life which is in the blood. Explicit statements like this make it seem very obvious to me that PSA is being taught in these stories in Gen 3 & 4. The statement by the writer of Hebrews that without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin, is even more explicit. Blood sacrifice was not a human idea God accepted, it was God’s idea.

I agree that PSA can sound barbaric, unjust, and capricious in some interpretations. It’s like God arbitrarily chose some whipping boy to take our place. That’s why I think it is important to understand that it is God himself who chose to take our punishment upon himself and that there was no other way for God to reconcile us unless he did so. So much God loved us that he was willing to do this.

“This sacrifice was to satisfy the wrath of God but did it? We still get sick, we still suffer, we still die so the death of Jesus didn’t change anything that we can see right now.”

Aren’t you assuming that any suffering in the world is the result of God’s wrath. On the contrary, much suffering occurs, as with Job, as a testing of our will to remain committed to the God who deserves our commitment. Scripture gives other reasons as well. Now in my terminology I would say that Jesus’ death satisfied the principle of justice rather than the wrath of God. Be that as it may, what is important for our purposes is to understand that just because someone is forgiven does not mean God will not still give punishment. Modern Evangelicals are very often unaware of this. Pastors try so hard to think of ways to encourage believers to avoid sin. But this is not easy to do when so many believe that they can sin and God will forgive and they can just begin again where they left off. Speaking to Christians, Paul said that God is not mocked and that what one sows, one will reap. Indeed, we are told that judgment begins in the house of God. A paradigm example might be David. He sinned by committing adultery and murder. He repented when he was exposed by the prophet and God said he was forgiven and would not die. But he still endured horrible punishment for this. I could give several examples from the NT as well. One would be failing to discern the body and blood of Christ in the communion meal. The sin of failing to treat the elements as the body of Jesus brought about sickness and premature death, Paul tells us, yet without actually negating anyone's salvation. So whether we want to say God’s wrath or God’s justice was averted by Jesus’ sacrifice, it was never meant to be understood that punishment in this life would be removed.

Some of these comments are somewhat random thoughts, I know. Write back if you get a chance. I'd love to hear what you think.

I wrote the following after only reading your initial question, Dexter. (I'm unsure of proper blogging protocol. Is it okay to call you Dexter?) At any rate, for the time being, these are my initial thoughts. I’ll send my revisions and recantations and additional statements later after I read all of your comments and that of your interlocutors.

Jesus’ death did not appease God’s wrath, it appeased the principle of justice which is intrinsic to the nature of God the Father as well as to that of the Son. The imagery of God blindly pouring out his wrath on his Son, seeing the Son as sin and not seeing him as he really is, good and innocent, is simply wrong. Yes, he became sin for us who knew no sin, and bore the punishment we deserve, but it was the principle of justice that required punishment. It was God’s love that asked justice to come upon himself instead of us, the ones who deserve punishment. Exactly how substitution can occur, we cannot fully say. We can see it intuitively, however. We can see that one may ask to take the punishment another deserves and that there may be some way in the deepest laws of God’s moral nature and moral universe that this substitution may so be diverted from the one person to the other who otherwise does not deserve it. Substitution expresses the depths of the love of God. A pain that only God could bear, a pain that for God would be true pain, God takes upon himself so that we might not have to bear it and might know reconciliation to God. God did not want to bear this pain. This was truly something God would have avoided if he could have. Paul says in Galatians essentially that if there were any other way God could have taken our sin and reconciled us to himself, God would have taken that way to bring us back to himself. So much God wanted to reconcile us to himself that he took this pain upon himself. It was worth the cost to God. This is why John says that God is love. This is God’s deepest and greatest attribute.

The Hebrew Scripture teaches this idea of substitution. The priests would place his hand on the goat to be sacrificed or sent away to die and speak out the sins of the people. The animal’s death was a death that took the people's place, it took the death we deserve by taking the sin we deserve. The suffering Servant of Isaiah 53 speaks of a person who would fulfill the symbolism of the animal sacrifice.

Please get rid of the idea that only Jesus, the Son, endured this pain. All that the Son endured, the Father did as well. I can make no sense of John 3.16 unless this is so. Personally, I don’t believe that God could have freely chosen otherwise. Because of God’s nature, because God is love and because God is absolute goodness, God had to choose to do this. Before God created us, God knew we could fall and that this painful atonement would then be necessary to bring us back to God. It was worth it to God to take this chance. Because God is love, God had to create conscious beings who could relate to God and thus know the greatest of all goods, the good and the joy of knowing God. Love demands that there will be more (as many as possible, I would think) who can know this good, and thus God creates.

Let me take a small sidetrack for those who find the idea of God not knowing something troubling. We should remember that, given a simple foreknowledge view, logically prior to the creation and to God knowing all events that will occur, God had to decide to create such a world. At that point, God did not know what the outcome of Adam’s choice would be and God, in a way, took a chance as to how it would turn out. God did not determine that it would be one way or the other but rather God decided that humans would be free to choose good or evil. (Jim knows that I don’t take a simple foreknowledge view but I include its possibility for those who do.)

You ask, “How much blood would this God need to balance the scales of justice?” I don’t know, but God knows. And God gave as much blood and pain as God needed to give. You say, “I see that if appeasing an angry God is what is needed, the death of Jesus becomes the main focus of the Gospels.” Again, it is not a matter of appeasing an angry God. But appeasing justice does require that death be the main focus of the Gospels. No this was not all that Jesus talked about. But he did speak of his giving his life a ransom for many. He was spoken of as the Lamb which takes away the sins of the world, a direct allusion to the substitutionary death of the animal sacrifices of the Hebrew Scripture. I could cite more passages but I do have to admit that this doctrine did not constitute the bulk of his teachings. But counting statements or passages does not show us what constitutes one’s most important teaching. With the additional teachings of Paul and the other Apostles, we do see that this is the most important of Jesus’ teachings (assuming, of course, that other teachings like that of God’s love and the need to be reconciled to God are seen as a part of this teaching).

You say, Jesus “also was forgiving sins and restoring creation before his death and resurrection.” But God was also forgiving sins and restoring creation a hundred millennia or more before Jesus came. The animal sacrifices did not in themselves remove sin, the writer of Hebrews tells us, but by those sacrifices anticipating Jesus’ future death, they were counted as a means to remove sin. They covered sin in anticipation of the ultimate sacrifice Jesus would make. Adam and Eve could not cover their nakedness by their own efforts. Only the covering of the skin of animals truly covered them in God’s sight. This seems to me to be an obvious allusion to the need for a death to remove the shame of sin. Even those before the time of Christ who had no sacrifice, God “winked at” (Ac 17.30 KJV) or held without judgment until the day they would know about and be able to appropriate Christ’s sacrifice.

Now I need to read the rest of the comments.

I really appreciate the responses. They have given me a good bit too think about.

First, I would like to address what Bob Walton stated. I agree 100% that we should aim at getting an accurate reflection of the scripture. The people that hold to the other theories of atonement believe they are reflecting scripture just as much as the ones who believe in Penal Substitution Atonement (PSA). I will admit that I read a lot from the New Perspective scholars. I enjoy the way they challenge the way we look at scripture. I’m not saying I agree with everything they say, but they have the same goal we all should have, and that is getting back to what the original authors meant. I honestly don’t know what they all think about PSA. I have never really liked PSA but I didn’t start reading other ideas until I started looking more into the Anabaptist tradition. I’m not really pushing any other theory, if I seem to be it is by accident, I’m trying to get a more complete picture of atonement.

Jim is right to point out that there is no notion of God setting up the sacrificial system as an appeasing compromise. That was merely a suggestion that was loosely based on that man came to God with a sacrifice before God had set the system itself up. I could be wrong but I don’t think God asked for a sacrifice until Abraham was asked to offer Isaac. This is something I don’t think any doctrine should be based on. I was just merely making an observation.
I would like to look at PSA from the outside. Imagine you are going to church for the first time and you hear a sermon on the cross and what Jesus accomplished. It sounds great but you were a little confused when the pastor mentioned PSA. You are very interested in knowing about this loving God so you approach the pastor afterwards to ask what he meant by PSA.

He states, “PSA refers to the doctrine that Christ died on the cross as a substitute for sinners.” You admit this part does sound like a loving God, but the pastor keeps going, “God imputed the guilt of our sins to Christ, and He, in our place, bore the punishment that we deserve. This was a full payment for sins, which satisfied both the wrath and the righteousness of God, so that He could forgive sinners without compromising His own holy standard.” (Definition is from Theopedia.com)

Someone from the outside might not like what this sounds like. An innocent man was killed, for something others have done to turn back God’s wrath. Going by this definition God seems only able to forgive if something pure and innocent dies. I know this might sound a little overboard, but I don’t think it is. I have heard many people say that don’t want to be part of a religion that not only glorifies a brutal murder, but this is child abuse taken to a whole new level. Of course, this doesn’t mean PSA is wrong, but when people are raised hearing PSA, they will come to accept it as the norm and may not question it as honestly as someone hearing it for the first time.

Now to look at it from the inside. This sacrifice was to satisfy the wrath of God but did it? We still get sick, we still suffer, we still die so the death of Jesus didn’t change anything that we can see right now. We can expect to have some future event where there is a resurrection, but nothing as to what most people see as God’s wrath has changed. As I mentioned earlier Paul deals a lot with consequences so instead of directly diverting God’s wrath we must think of the consequences of God’s wrath which is death and ultimately separation from God. That God’s wrath is letting us be held accountable for the sins we commit. We not only die but we will be will be cut off from the presence of God. In the Garden (I just bought John’s book on Adam and Eve. I will be reading it after I finish Witherington’s commentary on Romans) we have to remember that they did not die directly because of sin. They died because they were cut off from the Tree of Life. They were kicked out of the Garden, no longer able to eat of the Tree, and no longer able to commune with God. This is God’s wrath, and this is what atonement is able to repair. Death is what happens when we can no longer have a chance to get to the Tree of Life, and this leads to being cut off from God. This all could easily be wrong, but I’m trying to look at from another angle, that starts from the very beginning. Jesus was able to make atonement that caused God’s wrath to pass over us, and now we are no longer cut off from the presence of God.

Does God need the death of Jesus to be able to forgive? To me this doesn’t even sound like the God that Jesus revealed, but I don’t want to base anything just on my feelings. I think we only need to look at the Gospels to see this isn’t true. We see Jesus forgiving people of their sins, and we also see the reaction he got for doing this. He was making a claim that he had no right to make, at least some of the people thought he had no right. The Gospels also mention Jesus curing the sick and casting out demons. He was restoring the people, liberating Israel, and doing what God promised would be done in Isaiah. In Matthew 8:17, that I quoted earlier, Jesus bore our diseases and took on our infirmities. I don’t think “bore our disease” means anything was being imputed. The Greek word for “bore” could also mean “carried away” or “lift up.” We probably shouldn’t be looking at this verse in Matthew and say anything was “imputed” as the definition for PSA suggests, but that Jesus “carried away” their diseases (I feel this should also apply to other areas where “bore” is used) What I think is more important is this was all being done and fulfilled before his death on the cross. In Luke 18, we have Jesus answering the question, “What must be done to inherit eternal life?” Jesus did not mention the cross, but gave instructions as to what must be done. Jesus goes much further than the rich man wanted to hear, but the answer didn’t involve the cross. Just before this exchange, Jesus tells the story of a tax collector who was justified because of his humble attitude. These are all things that I have been told to happen because of the cross, yet the Gospels show this before the cross.

I honestly don’t think we can look at the cross and say it is an either/or situation. I think the cross is the answer for several questions at once. Was Jesus telling the truth? Paul points out that if Jesus didn’t rise from the dead then we are still in our sins. I take this to mean that if Jesus didn’t rise, then he wasn’t the messiah that was promised. The Kingdom of God has not come, and Israel was not being redeemed and were still in their sins. Is God a god of love? I think the cross most definitely reveals that God is a god of love. I think the death and resurrection also reveal that death has been defeated. That Jesus is the Tree of Life, made available to everyone, so sin and death will not keep us from God. We will be able to commune with God through Jesus. The cross also revealed our corrupt nature to us. I don’t think God needed the blood of Jesus, but we needed the blood of Jesus to learn that God does forgive and is true to His promise. Jesus took on the punishment and consequences of our sinful nature for our behalf, and revealed that God will pass over our sins. I also know that 1st Peter 2:24 mentions Jesus bore our sins in his body on the cross but if we read before this verse we can see a little bit more of what Peter was saying. He was warning them they might suffer for Lord’s sake, and they needed to remember how Jesus suffered and death was not able to hold him. I think Peter was reminding them of the mission of Jesus that lead to his suffering, on their behalf, so they should be willing to suffer for his sake. I have tried, and probably failed, to cram a lot into this paragraph to hopefully show the Bible uses many different ways to express the same point. That because of what Jesus did on our behalf our sins are atoned for. We will be able to commune with God as Revelation 21 teaches us. I don’t think this was done just because of his death. I think this was done because of His life, death, resurrection, accession, and completed upon His return.

I don’t think PSA is just wrong. I think it needs to be reworded to be understood better, and not from the point of view of the medieval perspective. Greg Boyd says, “What I want to say is not that this theory is wrong…I want to say is that the atonement is so much more than this. If it is so much more than this, then it follows that using “penal substitution” as our guiding term is inadequate and misleads others. At the least it does not provide enough information to explain what one really believes occurs in atonement.”

If we go by the definition of PSA this can cause a lot of people to focus only on the death of Jesus appeasing God’s wrath, all our sins are washed away, and now everything is done. I think we can look at the condition of the church to see that is exactly what happens. PSA sees atonement just in the death and resurrection of Jesus. The mindset of many Christians is that all our sins are washed away because of his death, so nothing else is needed. Now we have a church that does not resemble the Kingdom and Christians who do not reflect the image of Christ. People only focus on the sacrifice and not the change we are supposed to have. I think most of us agree that in the Old Testament God mentioned he didn’t desire their sacrifices and that was due to their wrong attitude. They were only worried about doing the ritual of the sacrifice and not the humble and repentant attitude that came with it. This is the exact same thing that happens when PSA is taught by the definition I mentioned above. People only focus on the sacrifice. They forget the life of Jesus that took up most of the Gospels and they forget Jesus is our King. Atonement should be based on his life, death, resurrection, ascension into kingship and now we are Kingdom citizens.

( I hope I’m not to far off. I don’t have any formal schooling Biblical Studies. I just read a good bit. I appreciate any information that helps to me learn and grow)

Dexter slab, You are very correct in saying that the idea of penal substitution first appeared in the Middle Ages (Anselm of Canterbury around 1100 in Cur Deus Homo?). You concern, like that of the Reformers 450 years later, was that other theories of the atonement either made God a liar (the so-called "Devil Ransom Theory"), allowed for the theoretical possibility that Christ's death might have accomplished nothing at all (if His death was intended as an example), or, most importantly, implied that Christ's death made salvation possible for all but essentially "left the ball in man's court"—salvation by works. The important point is not the medieval origins of the doctrine, but the fact that it is an accurate reflection of what Scripture teaches. This is obviously and always our greatest concern: We always want to understand what the Scripture teaches.

The last of the three listed above seems to be the direction in which you are leaning; Jewish rabbis are not the only ones who see atonement as the result of human effort.

Your reference to Scot McKnight is telling, though. McKnight is associated with the emerging church movement and, more importantly, "New Perspectives on Paul," from which dexterslab seems to have gotten his view of the atonement, which is anything but orthodox, largely because of its denial of Penal Substitution.