This is a rebroadcast of our interview with Dr Terryl Givens. Back in 2022, we discussed several atonement theories in connection with Gene England, who wasn’t a fan of penal substitution. With this being Holy Week, this is a good intro to atonement theology as we get ready to discuss Dr Diedre Green & Dr Eric Huntsman’s book called “Latter-day Perspectives of Atonement.” Why did Jesus die for us? Was he a moral teacher, or did his death substitute for our sins? Why does God require someone to die for sin? We’re going to dive into atonement theology with Dr. Terryl Givens. Were Gene England’s views of the atonement heretical? Check out our conversation…
Don’t miss our other conversations about atonement: https://gospeltangents.com/lds_theology/atonement/
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Atonement Theories
GT 37:53 Well, there was another story about atonement theories, and I’d love to have you talk a little bit about that. But he got a little bit of flack for [that] as well.
Terryl 38:00 Yeah, he did.
GT 38:01 Can you kind of give us a brief background on atonement theories?
Terryl 38:04 Sure. Let me see if I can go through very, really, really quickly. The early church, the first couple of centuries didn’t seem to concern themselves with atonement as a theology. Jesus died for us. He resurrected. That seemed to be the essential, theological elaboration of his death. The atonement doesn’t show up as a word in earliest Christian writings. But then a couple of centuries into the tradition, theologians begin to try to articulate what did it mean? Why did he have to die? In what sense did he substitute himself for us? So, really, the most significant development probably comes in the 11th century with Satisfaction theory of Anselm. The idea is that God is a governor. He’s a sovereign of the universe. His majesty has been offended. His dignity has been impugned by our rebellion, and therefore some kind of a payment has to be made, some kind of penalty. So, Christ offers to satisfy an offended justice sovereignty by paying the price.
Terryl 39:13 Abelard, writing a few years later, 11th and 12th century, vehemently repudiates that notion and insists that what really happens is that we are just so–it’s the shock of divine love of seeing what Christ underwent on our behalf, that our hearts are broken, and we are moved to repent. So, that becomes the theology of moral exemplariness.
Terryl 39:39 As we get to the age of the reformers, Calvin and Luther develop satisfaction theory into penal substitution, which becomes the most pervasive model in the modern Christian world. Penal substitution is all predicated on the idea of justice. Justice demands punishment. We sin. Somebody has to be punished. God is waiting to punish somebody. So, Jesus says, “Well, you can punish me.” So, he punishes Jesus. That’s also related to the Protestant theology of grace, which is technically called imputed righteousness. So, Christ dies for us, and He will be judged in our place, and that’s the only way that we can be found innocent. So, Latter-day Saint-ism never develops its own theology of atonement. Joseph Smith never used the word, as far as I can find. So, we just kind of assimilate what’s in the air. When James Talmage, writes Jesus the Christ and gets to the most important principle of atonement, he effectively says, “We don’t know. I’m not going to pretend to understand what happened in the garden or on the cross, but in some way, right. We are redeemed by his offering.”
Terryl 40:53 Well, Gene England was distressed that the language of Latter-day Saint discussions of atonement migrated toward the penal substitution, which he thought was perverse, this notion that God’s got to punish somebody.
GT 41:08 Yeah.
Terryl 41:08 So He’s going to punish Jesus.
GT 41:09 Somebody’s going to have to pay.
Terryl 41:10 Somebody has to pay. So, it’s about retributive justice. Justice is retributive. It’s not educative. It’s not reformative. It’s retributive in this model. So, Gene wanted to take us back to Abelard’s theory of moral exemplariness. So, he writes an essay, That They All Might be Saved, I think. Is that the name of it? Anyhow, it’s one of the first issues of Dialogue, and it’s his theology of atonement. It’s beautiful. It’s lovely, because it avoids all of the viciousness and the vengeance and the fury. It’s all about the shock of divine love, and how that, like the Book of Mormon says, “We are drawn to Christ by that gesture.” It’s a lovely article, and he sent a copy to Elder Packer, and he sent a copy to Elder Maxwell. This is typical of him. He would generally send them his work because he just really craved apostolic approbation for his work.
GT 42:07 Was that a mistake?
Terryl 42:09 Well, I won’t pass judgment on whether that’s a mistake. I think the most generous way to look at it is to recognize that he had a place in the public square, since he was an editor and eminent writer and professor. He wanted assurance that he was aligned with true doctrine, and that he had their approval for what he was doing. So, I don’t think that in and of itself is problematic. But he pushed it a little far.
GT 42:38 He didn’t get their approval.
Terryl 42:40 Well, piecemeal, he would. But he never a kind of blanket approval for his major theological projects. So, we have a copy of the response that he received from Elder Maxwell. The way I would summarize it would be to say, “Gene, love your article. The only fault I can find with it is none of its true.” Not exactly those words, but that was the essence. He just said he wasn’t so sure that it was true. I couldn’t find a copy of Elder Packer’s response, but we know that it was negative. So, we have him soliciting approbation from two apostolic figures. Now, I don’t think Elder Maxwell was an apostle at that time, but soon to be. We know that the response was, “No, this is not good doctrine.” But he continued to teach it, every fireside opportunity he had, every time he’s a gospel doctrine teacher. It’s anthologized in subsequent collections. It all comes to a head when he is teaching Sunday School, much later, in the 1980s. A member of his class writes a letter of complaint to the stake president who happens to be Merrill Bateman, and says he got this cowboy, teaching crazy, heretical doctrines on atonement. To his credit, President Bateman’s response is, “Well, you meet with Gene and you two sort it out.” So, this guy keeps a meticulous record of the conversation and a letter that he writes later to president.
GT 44:12 It’s like the Gestapo.
Terryl 44:13 Effectively, Gene owns his theology, and he won’t back down. The main problem seems to be from the perspective of the parishioner, that there’s nothing metaphysical about it, nothing real in the universe has transpired. We just have this instance of a suffering man whose example affects us. Gene didn’t deny that his interpretation was essentially correct. Well, Gene hears is no more about it for a number of years. Then, President Bateman ends up being the president of BYU and in Gene’s very first meeting with President Bateman, Gene later in his journal says, “It was cold. It was icy. It was very awkward. I didn’t feel at all that there was any warmth there. Then, as I left, he asked me one final question. ‘Oh, by the way, what do you think about the atonement?'”
Terryl 45:14 I can’t quite understand how Gene could be so oblivious to the connection. But the dots didn’t come together for him. In his journal, he wrote, “What an odd question.” But, no, it’s not an odd question, if you remember the history, and that he was the Stake President presiding over this conflict, and that it goes all the way back to 1969 or 70, when the article was first published. But he didn’t, he couldn’t quite put the pieces together. Even at this late date, Gene is still teaching and standing behind this idea of atonement. So that would seem to be..
GT 45:48 This is the moral exemplar, right?
Terryl 45:49 Moral exemplary theology of atonement. He never had any explanation from any ecclesiastical figure as to what was wrong. So, I can only speculate. But I would think that the problem would be that all four standard works use the language of substitution. So, even if it’s not penal substitution, there has to be something that happened more than just this willing sacrifice. In Gene’s version, there isn’t any explanation of why the atonement was universally efficacious. Most people have never heard of the crucifixion, will never be moved by it. So, how does the atonement relate to them? So, I think that the problem with the moral exemplary theologies of atonement, I think they’re beautiful and powerful. I don’t think they’re fully sufficient to explain the universality of the efficacy of the atonement. I’m guessing that something like that may have been at the heart of the discontent on the part of some of the brethren.
GT 46:59 Well, because I know, I have a distaste for penal substitution. Why does God need Jesus to die? It just seems very barbaric to me, very Stone Age thinking. I mean, is that the official atonement theology of the LDS Church?
Terryl 47:20 Well, we don’t have an official atonement theology. As I said, all of the standard works, use language that suggests some kind of substitution has taken place. He suffers on our behalf, for us, in our stead, language like that. I personally don’t think that penal substitution is an accurate or true or inspiring model because it makes God out to be this vengeful figure who demands somebody pay a price.
Terryl 47:53 The philosopher Nietzsche pointed out long ago that what’s perverse about that is it presupposes that My happiness in seeing you punished, will balance out the pain of your deed, and we get to this zero equilibrium. In fact, Augustine even wrote that the happiness of the blessed in Heaven will consist in part on their ability to see the suffering of the damned in Hell. So, there’s this perverse strain of vengeance that runs through much of Christian discourse. I would like to think that we can believe in the universality of the Atonement without having to take that route.
GT 48:35 Can you tell us a bit more about what you think the atonement means? What’s your theory?
Terryl 48:40 Well, my first statement would be [that] I don’t know. James Talmage didn’t get it. I certainly don’t presume to know. What I can say is that I think B.H. Roberts articulates a theology of atonement, that does the best job of those I have seen of reconciling scriptural accounts of substitution with a God who is, above all else, loving, and wants to educate and inspire, rather than punish. The name I would give that is consequential substitution, which is a horribly ugly term, but what it means is the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine & Covenants alike, as I read them, give us a way of thinking about justice, that is really helpful and healthy. And that is to see justice as the fulfillment of desire. Section 88:32 says that in the day of judgment, you’ll get whatever you’re willing to receive. It doesn’t say you’ll get what you deserve, or what you earned. It says you’ll get whatever you are willing to receive. When we have the many discussions of the law of restoration in the Book of Mormon, that’s essentially what that law seems to be about. If you choose goodness and light, you will get goodness and light. It’s what you choose, what you desire, what you really, really want. So, in that case, we can think of justice as more about the linkage of choice and consequence. That’s what justice is. If you choose, if I say, do you want broccoli, or ice cream, and you say broccoli, and I give you ice cream, well, it’s probably the other way around. You say ice cream and I say broccoli, and I give you broccoli, that’s not just, right, because you had a choice. I assured you your choice, and then the consequence doesn’t follow as it should. Or if I say, if you do your homework, I’ll give you ice cream. You do your homework, and I don’t give you ice cream, that isn’t just, because you showed by your actions, what you’re choosing.
Terryl 50:46 So, I think one can always think of justice in terms of the linkage of choice and consequence. If that’s the case, and there are these laws given which second Nephi tells us about, then, for God to be God, he has to govern and manage a universe in which there is an unfolding of consequences in accordance with choice for those who are educated sufficiently. If that’s the case, but none of our agency is ever perfect, right? We always see through a glass darkly. We’re impeded by genetic disorders, or inheritance or bad education. So, we all have agency. We’re all responsible. But we’re responsible to differing degrees. A child born with fetal alcohol syndrome is not going to be as liable for an alcoholic addiction as I am. So, as I understand atonement, Christ effectively says to all of us, your knowledge and your development is imperfect. If you want to choose again, repentance, then I will bear the consequences that have to unfold from that choice. God’s not imposing, it’s not a penalty, it’s not a punishment. They’re just the natural consequences that follow because that’s a law. There’s a connection between choice and consequence. But I will bear that consequence for you. So, it’s the consequence that he substitutes, not a penalty. That’s how B.H. Roberts understood the mechanism behind atonement. I think that’s a beautiful and compelling and logically coherent explanation. I also would like to think there’s room in that for Gene England’s and Abelard’s theory. There is something, also, about the spectacle, the shock of divine love that we witness that is the catalyst to our transformation.
GT 52:50 That’s cool. That’s more appealing to me than penal substitution, I’ll say that.
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