Having discussed the Patristic teaching on Penal Substitutionary Atonement (PSA) beginning here, and continuing here, here, here, and here, it is unfortunate that in seeking to understand the Atonement, especially those elements that address justice, satisfaction, substitution, penalty, and punishment, some people (both for and against PSA) misunderstand key texts in such a way that God is misrepresented as cruel or even sadistic. This misrepresentation of the Atonement, then, not only places God in a false light, it also places that misrepresented aspect of God’s atoning work into ill repute, i.e. guilt by association. This misrepresentation will then cause many to back away from an essential aspect of the Atonement, or even lead some otherwise excellent scholars to deny it altogether. This creates a nest for heresy to grow, for one of the functions of this aspect of the Atonement, properly understood and represented, is that it places God’s justice and mercy in magnificent relief. The Scriptural and Patristic teachings on the Atonement include dealing with justice, satisfaction, substitution, penalty, and punishment, as addressed in previous studies, and so these aspects cannot be reduced to post-Schism inventions. Rather, the reverse is true, that the post-schism exaggerations and caricatures ought not be allowed to cause us to ignore or sideline these essential aspects of the Atoning work of Christ. For even if the elaboration and refinement of PSA came more recently, along with exaggerations and misrepresentations of it, the concept itself has been demonstrated to be present in key Patristic authors. The present study will attempt to address misrepresentations such as God being passibly pleased with the mere act of bruising mentioned in Isaiah 53, anthropomorphism, the Son's so-called damnation, and lastly that of PSA purportedly entailing a division within the Godhead.
To deny the catholic and orthodox understanding of Penal Substitutionary Atonement is to deny a fundamental element of God’s sovereign glory in His eternal justice, and in consequence serves to reduce the glory of His mercy in atoning so magnificently for sin and death in the Cross. What follows logically from this denial is a progression that begins with a weak, neutered view of God’s justice that develops into a weak view of sin, and so on into a weak view of God’s glorious grace, a weak view of the Cross, and finally a weak view of Christ that, ultimately, bottoms out in faithlessness and man-centeredness. The motivation for this denial, though, appears twofold. The first is a right rejection of gross caricatures, which in the overzealous rejection ends up “throwing the baby out with the bathwater,” which is to say that in rightly rejecting gross caricatures of PSA, many ignorantly throw out the Scriptural and Patristic understanding of it as well. The second seems to be that people falsely try to protect people from the alarming severity of God’s justice by minimizing it, and so try to magnify His mercy by minimizing His justice, and as such people end up being offended at the very idea of God’s justice, but also end up being uncompelled by His milquetoast mercy.
In this light, the importance of getting Penal Substitutionary Atonement right is very important, and the consequences of getting it wrong are high. To get it wrong in either direction is to get the Gospel wrong: “But even if we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed” (Galatians 1:8).
One of the major misunderstandings that arise in regards to Penal Substitutionary Atonement relates specifically to this sort of sentiment: “how much joy God the Father took in each strike of the hammer driving the nails into His only begotten Son and satisfying His anger.” In other words, God is said by some to take emotional joy and satisfaction in the physical aspect of Christ’s crucifixion. Now, it is noteworthy that this misunderstanding comes from a promoter of PSA, for it is not only those antagonistic to PSA that misrepresent it. This sort of statement, however, makes at least two fundamental misunderstandings, including mistaking the actual object of joy in the crucifixion, on the one hand, and failing to account for God’s impassibility, on the other, which is a version of the heresy of anthropomorphism. In the present study, we will attempt to resolve these and related misunderstandings.
As asserted, one of the common misunderstandings and consequent misrepresentations of PSA is the actual object of joy in the crucifixion, mistaking the instrumentality of the Cross as the object of joy rather than the object of joy being its telos. The origin of this misunderstanding is rooted in a misinterpretation of Isaiah: “Yet it pleased (chaphets; LXX boúlomai) the LORD to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief” (Isaiah 53:10). The Hebrew term chaphets more strongly suggests “pleasure,” whereas the Greek term boúlomai means more strongly “to will” or “to determine,” but according to Mounce also means “to desire” or to “be pleased,” and Vine suggests that it “expresses more strongly than thelo,” which is another term for “to will.”
If the object of joy was the bruising as such, considered independently of its telos, then it would be accurate to claim that PSA necessitates a sadistic God and therefore right to reject PSA. But since the Scripture itself, both in Isaiah and in Hebrews, indicates that there is a sense in which pleasure and joy were present in the bruising and enduring of the Cross, that in a sense even motivated the suffering, it is not enough to simply say there is no pleasure in it; one is rather put in a position of needing to understand how this is so. Denying PSA does not explain Isaiah 53:10, and reference to the LXX boúlomai does not “correct” the Masoretic reading.
The fact of God’s “pleasure” must be reckoned with, and as we will see it is not so problematic if one is willing to move beyond a superficial reading, for obviously the pleasure is in the telos of the suffering, as indicated in the very next verse of Isaiah: “He shall see the labor of His soul, and be satisfied. By His knowledge My righteous Servant shall justify many, for He shall bear their iniquities” (Isaiah 53:11). Clearly God is not pleased with or willing the act of bruising for its own sake, and so the pleasure cannot be seen as being in the mere act, but in its result. Sadism is thus denied and rejected as having any bearing on PSA. God was pleased with the act in light of its result: that many were justified. God was pleased because Christ, in being bruised, satisfied the demands of justice in order to justify many.
The object of joy, utilizing a Scriptural teaching to capture the principle of it, is found in Hebrews, speaking of Jesus, “who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God” (Hebrews 12:2). In other words, God the Son was Himself motivated by joy, and so joyfully endured the Cross, despising the shame of it, and in this sense was Himself pleased to endure it for the sake of its greater purpose, although the enduring of it was in itself obviously utterly unpleasant. There is therefore a distinction between the objects of joy which clarifies the statement of Isaiah. God was pleased with the purpose of the bruising, and so Isaiah uses the metonymy of being pleased with bruising to express that God was pleased with the telos of the bruising.
One cannot justify without or apart from justice, thus God was pleased that His Son was willing and able to bear the bruising in order to justify many. He was not pleased with the bruising; He was pleased with its ultimate purpose and goal. Similar to how an athlete is pleased to endure all manner of hardship for the sake of a victory, so God was pleased to bruise His willing and fully knowledgeable Son, who endured it for the very sake of the joy set before Him, for the sake of our justification. Paul even states of himself: “I discipline (hypōpiázō) my body and bring it into subjection, lest, when I have preached to others, I myself should become disqualified” (1Co 9:27). The term hypōpiázō means “beat black and blue, to smite so as to cause bruises and livid spots, like a boxer one buffets his body, handle it roughly, discipline by hardships.” Is Paul sadistic? By no means! If Paul can in some sense bruise himself to a greater purpose, cannot the Father do so with His Son?
“You should know in your heart that as a man chastens his son, so the LORD your God chastens you” (Deuteronomy 8:5).
“For whom the LORD loves He chastens, and scourges every son whom He receives” (Hebrews 12:6).
Notice that Hebrews 12:6, just quoted, follows on the heels of Hebrews 12:2 quoted above. Some people refuse to understand that God providentially uses pain in order to accomplish His purposes. It is in every sense right to affirm that God is pleased in accomplishing His purposes, even if He is not per se pleased with the evil which attends it. To deny this is to deny a pervasive theme, even the logic, of Scripture. The context of Hebrews shows this:
And you have forgotten the exhortation which speaks to you as to sons: ‘My son, do not despise the chastening of the Lord, nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by Him; for whom the Lord loves He chastens, and scourges every son whom He receives’ (quoting from Proverbs 3:11-12). If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom a father does not chasten? (Hebrews 12:5-7)
Paul has just finished telling us to “look unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith,” and so clearly the idea here is that God Himself does the chastening, “for whom the Lord loves He chastens, and scourges every son whom He receives,” and therefore it ought to be unproblematic that God chastened the Son on the Cross for the greater purpose of raising Him from the dead and saving man. If, in referring to the Cross, Jesus is the author and finisher of our faith, and also the Son of God, and God the Father chastens us as sons, then God clearly chastened the Son on the Cross, who for the joy that was set before Him endured it. If Christ had the purpose of the Cross in mind and found joy, then it would be blasphemous to assert that the Father had less knowledge than the Son and less joy in the accomplishing of His will. The Father’s chastening of the Son on the Cross is the very model for Paul’s argument, and the justification for our endurance of suffering. Paul concludes his argument:
Furthermore, we have had human fathers who corrected us, and we paid them respect. Shall we not much more readily be in subjection to the Father of spirits and live? For they indeed for a few days chastened us as seemed best to them, but He for our profit, that we may be partakers of His holiness. Now no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful; nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. (Hebrews 12:9-11)
Can God not take pleasure in raising up, and therefore chastening, sons for Himself? But someone will object that this cannot include suffering. But Paul just criticized his audience, saying “You have not yet resisted to bloodshed, striving against sin” (Heb 12:4). The very chastening of God is being directly related both to sonship and to striving against sin unto loss of blood and life, modeled on Christ Himself. For, “having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will” (Ephesians 1:5). If it is according to the good pleasure of God’s will to have sons, and in love He chastens us, for certainly it would not be in hate, then God’s chastening and God’s pleasure are not mutually exclusive. Notice this theme of Scripture:
“But as for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, in order to bring it about as it is this day, to save many people alive” (Genesis 50:20).
“And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance” (Romans 5:3).
“Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, For theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake” (Matthew 5:10-11).
“So they departed from the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for His name” (Acts 5:41).
"Are they ministers of Christ?--I speak as a fool--I am more: in labors more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequently, in deaths often” (2 Corinthians 11:23).
“Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ's sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:10).
“For to you it has been granted on behalf of Christ, not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer for His sake” (Philippians 1:29).
“Yes, and if I am being poured out as a drink offering on the sacrifice and service of your faith, I am glad and rejoice with you all. For the same reason you also be glad and rejoice with me" (Philippians 2:17-18).
"My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, ... Blessed is the man who endures temptation; for when he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to those who love Him” (James 1:2, 12).
“But rejoice to the extent that you partake of Christ's sufferings, that when His glory is revealed, you may also be glad with exceeding joy” (1 Peter 4:13).
“But even if you should suffer for righteousness' sake, you are blessed. ‘And do not be afraid of their threats, nor be troubled’” (1 Peter 3:14).
“Yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in this matter” (1 Peter 4:16).
“For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory” (2 Corinthians 4:17).
“And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28).
“A woman, when she is in labor, has sorrow because her hour has come; but as soon as she has given birth to the child, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world” (John 16:21).
The rejection of PSA on the grounds that God could not have pleasure in the accomplishing of His own will, for as the Garden of Gethsemane makes plain it was the Father’s will that Christ be crucified, is also to offend against God’s omniscience, and Christ’s complete knowledge of what was about to happen. If Christ could suffer the Cross joyfully, as He, James, Peter, and Paul each commend us to rejoice in our tribulations, even though “no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful,” then cannot God in His omniscience be pleased with the action, in light of its purpose, by which He accomplishes the salvation of man? To accuse God of sadism in being pleased to bruise His willing, fully knowledgeable, and joyful Son for the sake of saving man is to accuse both the Father and the Son of ignorance.
The problem with anthropomorphism is also considerable, because when people who are advocating or denouncing PSA make claims for or against it by referring to God’s “pleasure,” they falsely assert passibility into the doctrine of PSA. Those who are for PSA, who also anthropomorphize, do in fact make God out to be sadistic by lowering God to the level of passibility. Those who are against PSA, and yet posit this anthropomorphism as essential to PSA in order to fight against PSA, create a strawman, erecting an idea foreign to PSA in order to reject PSA. Neither work. One cannot either establish or critique a doctrine by assuming a heretical stance as a standard of proof for or against it.
St. John of Damascus in Book I Chapter 11 of his Exposition, discussing anthropomorphic language as used in the Scriptures, clearly states: “By His wrath and indignation let us understand His aversion to evil and His hatred of it.” When discussing God’s “wrath” against sin, or His “pleasure” in bruising, or even in propitiating God’s wrath, we must therefore proceed hermeneutically according to the principle that “all these things which are affirmed of God as if He had a body contain some hidden meaning which, through things corresponding to our nature, teaches us things which exceed our nature.” In other words, Scripture uses “images, types, and symbols that correspond to our nature” in order to communicate “symbolically” that which “has a loftier meaning.” This is no less true of Isaiah 53. PSA does not require anthropomorphism, but necessarily and rightfully rejects it, whereas those who reject PSA on the basis of a perceived anthropomorphism have engaged in a logical fallacy. (Please also see the two relevant chapters of Leon Morris’ exemplary word study related to the concept of propitiation as used in both the Old and New Testaments in his magisterial work, The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross, where he unravels among other things the inadequacy of eliminating the Biblical concept of propitiation, as many do, in exclusive favor of expiation.)
Another falsehood asserted against PSA is the concept sometimes associated with PSA that God “damned” the Son. A confusion here arises almost entirely based on a non-relevant connotation with the term “damn.” Terms must be defined, not merely objected to. The word itself evolved from Middle English “dampnen, also damnen, dammen” and means “to condemn, declare guilty, convict.” It also bears relation to the Latin damnare, meaning “to adjudge guilty” or “to pronounce judgment upon.” Christ precisely bore the judgment of man, which is death. Damnation here simply means that Christ bore the punishment of man, the curse of man was imputed to or appropriated by Him, which is to say Christ bore the guilt and condemnation of man in His Person, all the while remaining sinless. Obviously it was God’s will that Christ went to the Cross to accomplish this, so it is fair to say that Christ bore the judgment of man’s guilt, bore man’s condemnation. As St. Philaret of Chernigov states of Christ’s death, “this is the very death that guilty mankind deserved, and which Jesus underwent for all men” (On the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ, Homily 46, pg 341). This is what the term damned means, and so what Christ’s being said to be “damned” means; it means that “By His own will He took upon Himself the guilt of mankind and voluntarily resolved to endure the punishment for it” (ibid, pg 344). What sinful man deserved, which is God’s divine judgement, this is what Christ bore in order to “reconcile God’s righteousness with guilty humanity” (ibid, pg 342). The quibbling complaint surrounding the word “damn” is therefore committing the red herring fallacy. George Mastrantonis, speaking of Christ’s sacrifice in A New-Style Catechism on the Eastern Orthodox Faith for Adults, continues the Patristic witness when he says that Christ “replaced the penalties of man” (pg 90). For “the highest penalty was imposed on the Innocent One instead of the guilty” (ibid). That is precisely what the word “damn” means, despite the caviling of objectors.
Lastly, and perhaps the most egregious complaint, is that PSA entails a division in the Godhead. The absurdity of this claim ought to be obvious, but alas to many it is not. If Christ can be tired, if He can be hungry, if He can be thirsty, if He can suffer in His human nature, then He can suffer anything that is appropriate to human nature. If His fatigue, hunger, and thirst do not entail a division in the Godhead or in His Person, if His suffering does not entail a division in the Godhead or in His Person, and if His death does not entail a division in the Godhead or in His Person, then to say that Christ was divided from the Father by bearing the judgment of and for man is patently absurd. Gethsemane clearly shows that it was the will of the Father that Christ suffer, and it was for this purpose that Christ came (cf. Matthew 16:21, 20:18-19, 28, 26:2; Mark 8:31; Luke 24:7, 26-27, 46; John 12:27; Acts 2:23). Suffering and death were the judgment, the damnation, the curse, the sentence, and so to deny PSA is to deny the very Incarnation and Atoning work of Christ. To assert a division in the Godhead in the Atoning work of Christ’s destroying the condemnation of death by bearing the condemnation of death is to utterly unravel the Atonement, for the “limitless love of the Son offered itself in sacrifice upon the altar of the Cross so as to proclaim to heaven and earth the inviolable laws of eternal righteousness” (Philaret, 344).
-Fr. Joshua Schooping
