Some people object to penal substitution as a model for atonement. Why does God require the death of Jesus? Is that part of a loving or a vengeful God? Dr Deidre Green & Dr Eric Huntsman weigh in on the pros and cons of penal substitution. Check out our conversation…
Don’t miss our other conversations about atonement: https://gospeltangents.com/lds_theology/atonement/
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Pros & Cons of Penal Substitution
Interview
Eric 00:38 What happens is, if it is this infinite, eternal thing that we experience and that we benefit from and yet it is infinite and eternal means the mortal mind can’t fully comprehend it. We necessarily fall back on models. And models help us understand what we’re experiencing. And because some models make so much initial sense–so, for instance, people say, “Well, mercy can’t rob justice and the Book of Mormon talks about how Jesus suffered for our sins.” And so that aligns with what we have throughout Christian history called penal substitution. That’s the one. And we have some very approachable models that some of our own leaders have given us. For instance, President Packer talked about the debtor theory. Or President Hinckley talked about, “He took a lickin’ for me,” this idea of substitution. Those work so well, and teaching our children or people in seminary or BYU religion classes, we assume that’s all there is to it. And the reality is the Atonement is so rich and so deep that all these different models catch a different piece of it.
Eric 01:41 One of the things we try to establish in the introduction is we think all of these models are important and useful. A couple of our reviews, which, fortunately, have been pretty positive so far, have said, “Yeah, they’re showing us all these other ones besides penal substitution.” And we have never suggested that penal substitution is not an important, if not vital, way of understanding the Atonement. It’s just that there are additional ones, which the Book of Mormon, itself, supports. So, Fiona Givens, she and Terryl talk a lot about the healing aspect of the Atonement. Well, that’s built into the Book of Mormon. And there are all kinds of other transformational models. One of our contributors, J.B. Haws, who was focusing on atonement in the Doctrine & Covenants, he took the idea of substitution and by taking the word penal out and giving us another concept that helps us understand why it is so vicarious. He didn’t use this term, but the way I’ve described it to people is J.B., he actually has a model that his wife gave him about jeep-ing and having a problem, their natural consequences of making mistakes. And so I’ve kind of described that as consequential substitution. It’s still substitution. But it’s not just that there’s some Shylock in the sky out there demanding his ounce of blood, if you’ve got the Merchant of Venice reference there, that it is substitutionary. But one of the things that, as Deidre says, has been attacked through the ages is well, who is demanding the punishment? Is a loving father demanding punishment, or is it a personification of justice, etc.? And so we laid out some of those. Ariel went to town on it, if you read her very deep chapter, which looks at all of these patristic models, Church Fathers approach to it. Even in the late antiquity, in the Middle Ages, there were so many different approaches just trying to catch a flavor of this. I like to describe these different models as being different pieces of a mosaic or different colored pieces of glass in a beautiful window. They’re all casting a different light on it. So, we were just hoping we could present people all of these different ways that scripture and theology have tried to explain what Jesus has done for us.
GT 03:44 Yeah, very good. I think, personally, I’ve always looked at, especially the Book of Mormon and the Bible, and probably Elder Packer, I think, has had the most impact on me and I think [on] a lot of Latter-day Saints with the idea of a penal substitution model, the idea that Jesus paid for all of our sins. I have to be careful, because I’m like, can I say, I don’t like that model. It just seems like why would a loving God beat to death a savior for my sins? He didn’t deserve it. Because you think of the scapegoat, and that we put all–ancient Israel, they would put all their sins on the scapegoat, and the scapegoat would take all the sins away from the tribe. To me, that’s the only model, in an LDS context, that gets emphasized, I will say. And so, some of these other models, like satisfaction, moral influence, Christus Victor, could we spend a little bit more time on those for people who aren’t as familiar on those other different models? Because I’ve talked to a few people, and they’re like, well, the LDS Church doesn’t have any official atonement model, which I think is probably true. And maybe, we take a little bit from each of those models. But to me, penal substitution is the only one you see at church. I don’t hear Christus Victor. I don’t hear any of the other ones.
Deidre 05:28 I would like to make a lot of comments about that. First of all, let me say that, a lot of people share your view that the penal substitution theory just feels really problematic. I want to just name that while I appreciate the reasons for that, if you think about it long enough, even a moral influence theory of atonement, which has become much more popular, and I’ll make a point in a moment about how I think actually LDS teachings have shifted in that direction. Even that is quite problematic in its own ways. And so, I want us to think carefully before we actually dismiss certain models. To the point that we were both making earlier, I think all of these models get something right. There is a kernel of truth. There is a point that’s important in all of these models. But I don’t think it’s possible to just choose one or just fault or vilify one of these models. And so, I want us to be careful about that. I think part of what is problematic for people in the penal substitution theory is often just the issue of violence. But violence is a is an issue all the way around when we’re thinking about atonement. And you’ll see that a lot of the chapters in this volume are not just giving us an alternative to thinking about penal substitution, or hyper focusing on penal substitution, which I think is more of a problem than the model itself. But it’s also trying to deal with the issue of violence. When we’re dealing with that issue, it isn’t to negate that that we believe that Christ hung on the cross or that Christ bled from every pore. It’s not to negate that that matters. But for me as a theologian and a scholar, when I’m moving away from a sort of hyper fixation on violence, which I think is sometimes a problem, it’s to say that that’s not the ultimate meaning of atonement. That’s maybe not the most important point. But it’s not to negate it or deny it.
Deidre 07:45 I think the same thing is true when you see some of these alternative models that aren’t focusing so much on penal substitution. It’s not necessarily to deny penal substitution, or that there’s anything worthwhile in the penal substitution model. I personally wouldn’t be comfortable doing that. But it’s to say that, as you’re suggesting, Rick, we’ve hyper fixated on that model, to the exclusion of other facets of atonement, that are problematic. So, I said I would come back to this point about how, I think, really, there has been a significant shift over the last few decades. Eric and I talked about this in the introduction to the volume, that where a penal substitution theory, both in scripture and with the metaphors that Eric was describing earlier, there’s been a shift away from that towards more of an emphasis on passages like Alma 7 that give us more of a sense of this moral influence model, and also a sense of Christ’s solidarity with our suffering, and Christ’s empathy with our suffering. And so I do think that, actually, in General Conference talks, in the church in general, there has been a gradual shift over a few decades, that fits a more popular trend in Christianity, to really move towards the sense of solidarity and empathy that Christ has with us, more than Christ being punished or having to take on this cruel suffering that’s imposed on him. Eric, do you want to add to that?
Eric 09:26 I’ll jump in. Once again, Deidre and I were quick not to dismiss penal substitution, because I don’t think you can, if you’re going to take scripture at its face value. But by only privileging substitution of any type, we’re missing all these other aspects of what Jesus did for us. Now, atonement, of course, is a neologism. It’s an English word. It’s not Latin. It’s not Greek. It’s not Hebrew. But this idea that it’s everything Jesus did to make us at one again with the Father. It’s not only about sin and death. Now, when I teach Book of Morman at BYU, I talked about sin and death as being the two grand pillars. Redemption from sin and resurrection from death are the two grand pillars of the atonement. They’re helping us overcome what Jacob would call, “That awful monster, death and hell.” But there are other things that make us not like God. And if I can be personal for a moment, I have a son with autism. Now, that is not a sin. It is a physical situation he’s based on. But that’s something that will be healed or overcome. I don’t believe my god is autistic. Just like I don’t think my god is depressed, but I am depressed. I mean, there are a lot of things we experience in mortality, besides just moral sin and physical death, that keep us from being like our heavenly parents or Jesus Christ. Sometimes, and this is where we, as academic geeks, perhaps overly nuance things. But for instance, in biblical translations in the New Testament, there was a big debate over whether a particular word in Greek should be translated as propitiation or expiation. Propitiation seemed to indicate or intimate that we had to propitiate an angry God. And yet expiation means that there is something, the Greek word being miasma, we’re experiencing something in mortality, which is diametrically opposite to who God is. And we need to overcome that.
Eric 11:21 Now, one of the reasons why I think Ben’s chapter and then mine were helpful to start the project is Ben, for instance, laid out that the most common word for atonement in the Hebrew Bible, the Kippur stem, means the cover up. It’s covering these human conditions, this mortality, this moral sin. In the New Testament, khatola gay actually means reconciliation. We’re estranged from God for any number of reasons and Christ is bringing us back together. And then when we had the chapters, not just Nick Frederick’s and Sharon Harris’, but Joe’s and Fiona Givens’, when she was talking about atonement, the healing aspect, which is such a great Christological, soteriological contribution of the Book of Mormon, if we’re only focusing on penal substitution, we’re missing the fact that Christ’s atonement heals us from any number of things, not just moral deficiencies, not just sin, not even just physical death. Does that make sense? And so, our hope was by introducing the whole spectrum of different models, which are just human ways of trying to understand what Christ has done for us, we meant to open up the richness of what atonement study is, not to replace penal substitution, but add to it. I mean, I think Deidre and I both agree in our work, we’re not either/or kinds of people. We’re both-and. We just want to be able to plumb the depths and appreciate it more.
GT 12:51 Yeah, and I like that, because I think– I mean, I agree with you, that all of the different atonement theories have something to offer. And so, I totally embrace the idea. It just seems to me that the LDS Church, especially, I would say, hyper focuses on penal substitution. And so I would love to get away and not talk about that and get into this Christus Victor and some of these other theories. I think, in fact, Deidre, was it you or Eric, one of you said something about consequential substitution?
Eric 13:30 Well, that’s how I was trying to describe what J.B. Haws did. So, J.B. laid out from the Doctrine & Covenants, that there are certain consequences: you touch a fire, you’re going to be burned. If you go into a mine that’s been closed and you fall into a pit, you’re going to get hurt. And so, there are consequences to our actions, not just moral volitional things where we make a wrong choice, but sometimes just mistakes we make, and that Christ was absorbing those consequences for us. So, that’s the way I tried to describe what J.B. did more eloquently.
GT 14:04 And that’s what Terryl Givens said to me on my podcast. He used something, he said, “I need to come up with a new term,” but I know consequential was in the term. And I was like, oh, that sounds like Terryl Givens.
Deidre 14:16 Well, J.B. does rely on Terryl’s thought quite a bit and springboards off of it to develop his own theory. So, readers will see some threads there, where he’s drawing on Terryl’s work. And then also going further and focusing on the resources in the Doctrine & Covenants. I just want to–oh, go ahead, Eric. You’re about to say [something.]
Eric 14:40 Oh, no, no. I just wanted to follow up one more thing. It’s not I’m trying to push back on you, Rick. And it’s not that I’m the standard bearer for penal substitution.
GT 14:47 Push back.
Eric 14:49 Two of the people whose works we were originally going to try to reprint in our volume, Gene England’s and Lorin Hansen’s, we use as kind of models of what could go wrong with taking one approach and why we want to be both-and. Now almost all of us who have read his work, love Gene England, and he was so thoughtful, and he took something which was not unique. He took Abelard’s theory, which was the root of moral influence. And because of beautiful passages in the Book of Mormon, he ran with what he called a Latter-day Saint approach to moral influence. But Terryl, in his biography of Gene, pointed out that Gene got some pushback from that from Elder McConkie and others, because Gene focused so single-mindedly, “This is the model,” to the extent that he was almost dismissing vital things that the Atonement actually has done for us. But what Lorin Hansen did in his very long Dialogue article, I mean, we would have added a lot of pages to our volume, if we had reprinted it, is he pointed out, yes, there are some valuable things to see from moral influence, but we can’t step aside from these other ones. So, even if we might personally say, “Well, who’s demanding the punishment? Is it personified law? Is it God, Himself? Is it Satan?” If there are some things we can’t understand about it, I would say we’re, actually, I’m not going to say at our peril, because that makes me sound too doctrinaire. But I think we are risking losing something vital about what Jesus has done for us. I just don’t think there’s a way [to understand,] not just from biblical scripture, which is my specialty, but from Book of Mormon scripture, about sin and death being the two great obstacles, and mercy and justice. That’s why President Packer’s debtor model ran with it. Maybe that’s why people embraced it.
Eric 16:35 We were just saying, okay, there still some things about that we don’t understand. Who’s demanding it? How does this pay it? But we just want to understand the richness. The reconciliation model is one that really resonates with me. Now, that’s probably because I’m a New Testament geek, and khatola gay means reconciliation. But I remember very early on when my children were young, my son Samuel had spilled some grape juice on my wife’s very light-colored carpet. And we were angry. And the first impulse was, why did you do this? My daughter, Rachel, who’s six years old, got in the way and said, “Daddy, don’t be mad at Sam.” And that gave me enough pause, that I restrained my impulse, and ended up helping him clean it up. We took care of the situation. And later, trying to use that episode in my teaching at BYU, I would say, “If Sam was about to touch a hot stove, and I took him away, and was about to shake him, because I want to teach him a lesson, and Rachel stepped in said, ‘Daddy, don’t shake or hit Sam, hit me.” I mean, that would cause reason to stare. As a loving parent, I don’t want to do that. And, yet notice that my natural impulse was to do that. But the idea that someone could step in and bring two parties together, I mean, that’s more of a model I resonate with, as a more experienced parent now. Because, as we get older, and our children make different choices than us, or friends or family make different choices, a lot of people step away from the church, for instance, that this idea of estrangement is real. And sometimes it takes a third party to step in.
Eric 18:15 So, that reconciliation model was not one that I heard taught a lot, that meant something to me. And to say, hey, look in some of these Greek New Testament texts, that’s really the root of it. And yet, I do believe that some of these things need to be covered, which is what Ben points out when he talks about what atonement means in the Old Testament. And so, I provided two of the only tables we have in the book. And it’s because I had too much stuff to write my chapter. But I have these ridiculous tables where I looked up every passage in the New Testament and put them in categories and whatever. But I just wanted to illustrate what I could not explain in the narrative part of my chapter, is that there are dozens of models that Scripture uses. They all have taught me something valuable. This is what we were hoping this book would do. For believers, not necessarily for our non Latter-day Saint scholarly audience, but for our believing insider audience, we wanted them to step away saying, “Wow, Jesus is awesome. Wow, this really is the center of the gospel.” When I was trying to explain to my son as he got older with his challenges, he has autism, and I was trying to use the debtor model or the He took a licking for me model, and I was stumped. I said, “Buddy, when we turn this light switch, the light comes on.” I can explain in some vague terms, electric current goes and it causes the filament and a light to come on. But what I was trying to point out to him was that I don’t know the details and all the mechanics, but I know from experience that when I flip that switch, the light comes on. I just want you to believe, pal, that if you believe in Jesus, and you’re sorry for your sins and you ask him to forgive you, it’s going to work.
Eric 20:04 And so this is, of course, the tension. The intellectual part of us wants to talk about nuances and details and get all deep and theological. But as practitioners, not just as theologians, the fact is, it works. Most of us, to some degree or another, had at some point in our life experienced that, I don’t know if that made any sense, Rick?
GT 20:24 No, it did. And I love that you want to include all the models. I did look at those tables, although there were way too many pages. {group chuckles}
Eric 20:35 The book, when they were doing the book layout, they’re like, how are we going to make this work?
{End of Part 2}
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