Participation and Atonement

After an ordination service, I talked to a lecturer in Systematic Theology and I asked them if there is anything they think I should read. They listed some names off at me, of which I had completely forgotten. Months later I bumped into them again and they said they remembered my question and had been thinking about it a bit and then gave me two names, one of which was Oliver Crisp. They emailed some book titles and a YouTube clip of his.

After watching this clip (twice - so I could actually understand what he was saying!) I set about reading this book, bracing myself for a heavy slog. But I was pleasantly surprised, in that I found this book to be way easier to understand than the lecture that I watched.

This book was a bit like a textbook, giving a rundown on different atonement theories. What this means is, as Crisp says:

The central question that drives this volume is as follows: What is the mechanism by means of which Christ’s work reconciles fallen human beings to God? 

Categories

Before looking at the classical theories of atonement. The first chapter helped frame or categorise different ways the Bible may speak about atonement. These categories move from hints and underdeveloped ideas to full-functioning systems and structures. They were called motifs, metaphors, doctrine, models and theories:

Motifs and metaphors are partial pictures or windows into the doctrine; doctrines are more complex wholes that have motifs and metaphors as constituent elements; models are more narrow but conceptually richer attempts to provide a particular way of understanding the reconciling work of Christ; and theories about atonement models offer a way of thinking about these different doctrines relative to particular cultural and contextual hermeneutical concerns that shape the particular accounts of the work of Christ

With this framework, in reference to the 39 Articles, he comments that there are some trajectories of thought on the atonement, but gives a lot of room for more thinking to bring our understanding up to a model or a theory of atonement:

the Articles of Religion appear to commit Anglicans to a particular range or family of views on the reconciling work of Christ (either satisfaction or penal substitution, or something very similar to these views), it is also sufficiently dogmatically thin, so to speak, as to leave open a number of issues that require further development in order to provide a full-orbed understanding of the atonement. And this is usually provided by a model of atonement.

While pointing out that not one model of atonement offers "a single explanation of Christ’s atoning work", some do better at explaining the mechanics than others. The four general models of atonement looked at were moral exemplarism, ransom, satisfaction and penal substitution.

Moral Exemplarism

On moral exemplarism, which is put roughly as "the view according to which Christ’s work is primarily an example that should elicit a particular transformative response in individuals who encounter it". This model was downgraded to a weak atonement view because it gives "a conceptually thin mechanism of atonement. It is still not all that clear how Christ’s work is an atonement on the extended exemplarist view." This idea, more evokes a subjective response in someone who sees the great sacrifice of Christ on the cross causing the to also live a sacrificial life. It doesn't address atonement issues of "vicarious, representational, and expiratory."

Ransom

Likewise, ransom theory was downgraded to being a motif as it "pertains to one consequence of atonement—namely, the victory of Christ over sin. It is not a motif about the nature of the atonement per se, but about its upshot." We are freed by Christ paying our ransom, but its shortcoming is that "it provides no mechanism for atonement; its language is metaphorical, comparative, unfitted to giving us a clear basis for a doctrine of atonement."

Satisfaction

On satisfaction, it gave the best explanation I had read on Anslem's theory. I remember looking at these theories in the past, but never really understood the idea of how God's honour has to be satisfied. In this section, there were 8 axioms and many paragraphs explaining each step, but from what I could understand on this theory on restoring divine honour, it goes something like: our sin is terrible and steals honour from God. This sealing of honour doesn't take away from God, for He is immutable, but it does put us in debt (even an infinite demerit) for going against an infant God. Christ, who is able because of His sinlessness and being divine, comes and pays back our debt that we owed against God in abundance. God doesn't need compensation, but because God is just, He "restores" divine honour in accepting Jesus' abundance of merit on our behalf.

Jesus being both God and man plays into this theory, and links us to it as Jesus is our representation on our behalf:

Christ’s atonement is a means by which appropriate compensation can be offered to God (by God) on behalf of fallen humanity. Because Christ is a divine person with a sinless human nature, he is able to act vicariously on behalf of other human beings as a human being. And because he is a divine person with a human nature, he is able to provide an atonement of sufficient value that it can meet the demerit of human sin and dereliction. 

Satisfaction theory is praised for giving "a defensible doctrine of atonement".

Penal Substitution

It was when we started to get into Penal Substitution where I started to have some quibbles. There was a good contrast to show the differences in these theories. Anselm was clear that Jesus didn't take on punishment, but rather provided the perfect sacrifice for us.

Punishment and atonement are two different and incompatible ways in which God’s honor can be restored, according to Anselm. But Christ’s work is not a vicarious penalty or punishment; it is a meritorious satisfaction. The worry about the punishment of the innocent Christ in place of guilty sinners is an important objection to traditional accounts of penal substitution.

In the punishment versions of penal substitution, Christ actually takes on human sin and guilt, unlike the Anselmian view.

Penal substitution is defined as being:

the doctrine according to which Christ’s atonement is (primarily) his work on the cross in which he takes the place of sinful human beings as a substitute in order to suffer the punishment that is due for human sin, or the penal consequences of that sin, so that the penalty of sin may be met and fallen human beings may be reconciled with God.

And the main problem with this doctrine is that:

the claim that Christ is punished in place of fallen humanity is much more difficult to defend than the claim that Christ suffers the penal consequences of human sin, primarily because it seems morally wrong to punish an innocent in place of the guilty.

The main problem with this theory is dealing with guilt and how it is transferred from one party to another. If people's guilt is transferred to an innocent party, it seems unjust that the innocent party gets punished for what they didn't do, and it also seems unjust that those who did wrong are let off the hook.

Even if penal substitution means only that the penal consequences of sin are transferred from the sinner to Christ, there is still the worry that it seems unjust to inflict such harsh treatment on an innocent party instead of the guilty one.

The assumption is that guilt can not be transferred from one party to another. For people to be considered right, we need an idea of "legal relaxation". This is when, in a legal sense, God accepts Jesus in your place and you are declared to be right in God's eyes because of Jesus's work, but guilt isn't transferred onto Jesus.

the answer to how Christ can be a penal substitute at all involves a concept of legal relaxation that applies to Christ’s atonement. Christ is able to be the substitute for sin because God decides that Christ’s work satisfies the requirements for sin, and God is willing to accept Christ’s work as a substitute for the sin of those human beings whom Christ came to save...

...in the classical doctrine of penal substitution, God accepts Christ’s satisfaction of the penalty due for sin as a penal substitute on the basis of a legal relaxation whereby Christ is able to take upon himself the liability to punishment. Nothing is transferred from the sinner to Christ beyond this legal fiction.

Original Sin versus Original Guilt

To make this point about guilt not being transferrable to others, the book dives into the ideas of Original Sin versus Original Guilt. It was argued that in Adam's sin, he brought about a disease that then made us all capable of sin (like inheriting a physical condition from parents). Adam's sin didn't make us all guilty for his own sin, but corrupted us so that we were able to sin. It was suggested that Zwingli held to an idea like this. What Crisp was trying to avoid in this distinction is that Adam's moral guilt isn't passed on to us, for that seems unjust, and again it assumes that guilt is nontransferrable. In responding to someone who says we are all guilty of original sin, Crisp replies:

This seems a very strange arrangement, one in which the moral consequences of someone else’s sin are transferred directly to me by divine fiat, yielding guilt in me for something I did not do. For one thing, that seems monumentally unjust, for then I have immediately transferred to me a sinful condition that I did not choose, rather like having someone else’s debt immediately electronically transferred to my bank account, so that money is debited from my account as a result. For another, it implies a strange doctrine in which guilt can be transferred from one person (Adam) to another (me).

While I think I was persuaded by this distinction between Original Sin versus Original Guilt, I wasn't persuaded by the model being applied to the atonement. The underlying assumption seemed to be based more on philosophy than on scripture.

Independent of these theological and traditional considerations, there is also a good philosophical reason (which has already been intimated in the foregoing) for setting original guilt aside: guilt is nontransferable. A person’s guilt cannot become the guilt of her son or daughter, or of their sons and daughters, and so on. Even if that person is punished for her sin so that she is no longer culpable for it, she, and only she, is the one guilty of having sinned. Guilt is the inalienable property of the person who has sinned. This is due in large measure to the fact that guilt is intimately connected to a person’s moral agency.

My quibble

This issue for me came to ahead when I had just finished reading this book and then had to preach on Isaiah 52:13-53:12. While not mentioned in this book, in that talk I addressed Kant and his idea in Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason that pushed against the idea of guilt being transferable, following the same arguments in this book. The issue I have with this is in trying to stress the autonomy of an individual and making them responsible for their own sin, is that if we stress this too much, we forget the autonomy of God. Jesus was willing to take on our guilt for us, so let Him, and why can't God allow it, He is almighty, and I think this doesn't go against His nature and the things He can't do.

The whole idea of a guilt offering in the Old Testament was that the animal sacrifice would take on the guilt for the sinner (Lev 7:1-7, Lev 19:21-22). On the day of atonement, the high priest was to

lay both hands on the head of the live goat and confess over it all the wickedness and rebellion of the Israelites—all their sins—and put them on the goat’s head. He shall send the goat away into the wilderness in the care of someone appointed for the task. The goat will carry on itself all their sins to a remote place; and the man shall release it in the wilderness. (Leviticus 16:21–22 (NIV))

While we know "it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins." (Heb 10:4) there is at least some model, some idea, (a motif or metaphor perhaps??) that allows for the idea that sins could be transferrable. This case gets even stronger when looking at Isaiah 53 in that we see:

• he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. (v5)
• the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. (v6)
• he was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgression of my people he was punished. (v8)
• Yet it was the LORD’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the LORD makes his life an offering for sin (v10)
• he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors. For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors. (v12)

If this means anything, I would suggest that not only was the suffering servant (who is Jesus) to be a substitute but He seemed to suffer (pierced, crushed, cut off from the living) for the sins (transgressions, iniquities) of others which were actually "laid on him". He "bore the sins of many" in their place and was punished for it. That to me sounds like Penal Substitution in alignment with Crips definition above.

The response Crisp might say is that Christ could take on "the penal consequences for human sin" but His suffering the consequences "does not necessarily imply that the intentional harsh treatment suffered is, in fact, a punishment." To this I am not sure the purpose of making a distinction between the punishment of the consequences for sin, with the punishment for sin itself, especially in regards to the passages cited above.

In my mind, the least Crisp could have done was if he had some philosophical problem with the transfer of guilt to others, was to at least recognise that there are ideas of this nature in scripture and then maybe demote penal substitution to being a motif, metaphor or model of atonement. I think this would be more consistent within his own categories and would allow others to see that these ideas can be applied to atonement, perhaps in an even thicker way than the Ransom theory, even if the author doesn't feel like it is a full-fledged theory.

Wrap up

For the last section of the book Crisp went on to give his own account of the atonement, "one which views the atonement as a work that is vicarious, reparative, and representational in nature but that is not a penal substitution." This looks something like:

Christ stands in for the whole of humanity in his act of reconciliation. But he is not a substitute for humanity, and he does not bear the punishment or guilt for human sin. Thus, penal substitution is excluded. His act does satisfy the standard of God’s moral law. He does pay the penalty for human sin that includes death and alienation from God on the cross. But the payment of this penalty is an aspect of his penitential act on behalf of fallen humanity. Moreover, because he is the God-man, his vicarious action has the value sufficient to atone for the sin of all of humanity.

In the end of the book I think Crisp helpfully framed atonement in a broader theological context, pointing out correctly that atonement isn't the final end or goal of our salvation. Union with Christ and theosis and down the chain from the atonement. I appreciated this placement as this has also been a hobby horse of mine, in that, all the theological words we have about the atonement and its effects such as adoption, ransom, reconciliation, satisfaction, expiation, forgiveness etc are not the end goal, but a means to be with God. This from 1 Peter 3:18: "For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God..." All of what Jesus did on the cross for us was to bring us to God, it was so that we would just sit around and be thankful that we are free or forgiven or considered children of God. The end goal is we get God.

Overall I appreciated this book. I like the clear writing and explanation of things, and would probably recommend this book to someone who was a first or second year theological student who had to write an essay on atonement theories, or to someone who wanted to push their thinking about what Christ achieved on the cross for us.