Thy Dread Dispensation: Patristic Teaching on Penal Substitutionary Atonement

“Come, all ye peoples, and let us venerate the blessed Wood, through which the eternal justice has been brought to pass” (Festal Menaion, “Great Vespers of The Universal Exaltation of the Precious and Life-Giving Cross” (14 September), tr. Mother Mary and Kallistos Ware, 134).

There is no shortage of assertions about the Orthodox position against Penal Substitutionary Atonement. The problem is, arguments against Penal Substitutionary Atonement (PSA) by Orthodox theologians most typically erect and too easily knock down strawman arguments, do not adequately define PSA, and resist PSA based on perceived imbalances caused by common misunderstandings of PSA. A doctrine, however, is not wrong because it is misunderstood or calumniated by its detractors, or disproven by knocking down strawmen or championing other valid views. As such, this present study proceeds in order to clarify the topic.

(I will note here, however, that due to the intensity of reactions relative to those who take various sides on this issue, I will not cite any Orthodox writers by name who have opposed PSA. My intention is not to cause controversy with men, but to clarify that which has been overlooked and unaddressed in Patristic literature. Below will be examined discussions on the Atonement primarily by St. Maximus the Confessor (7th Century), St. John of Damascus (8th Century), and St. Symeon the New Theologian (11th Century). Let the evidence speak for itself. For a more general discussion of the Atonement, please see this earlier post.)

The opening quote from the Great Vespers of The Universal Exaltation of the Cross declares that, by the Cross, the eternal justice has been brought to pass. It continues: “By the blood of God the poison of the serpent is washed away; and the curse of a just condemnation is loosed by the unjust punishment inflicted on the Just” (134). In other words, there is a just curse upon mankind which the Just one takes upon Himself, to be inflicted by this curse so that, through the shedding of His blood, which is to say by dying, He could remove the just curse from those who rightly deserved it. As the hymn continues: “For it was fitting that wood should be healed by wood, and that through the Passion of One who knew not passion should be remitted all the sufferings of him who was condemned because of wood” (134). The “sufferings of him who was condemned” is a reference to man, who had “the curse of a just condemnation” upon him, mankind “who were plunged continually in the gloom of our forefather” (151-2), which is to say “all those who, through the stealing of the fruit, had been made outcasts and were sunk in death” (134). The curse of death is the punishment man inherited, “the curse of our mother Eve that fell on all mankind” (151), which was “transmitted to all our kind like some pollution from disease” (149). Christ, then, took the punishment of man’s just condemnation upon Himself in order to remit “all the sufferings of him who was condemned.” In short, Christ took on the punishment due to man for his transgression in order to meet the eternal justice of God.

Before going on to more explicit Patristic treatment of PSA, it will helpful to treat of the logic of the basic terms involved. Firstly, the term penal is the root of the term penalty. In short, just as the wages of sin are death, so the penalty of man’s disobedience is death. The term “penal” here thus simply refers to the natural consequence, or penalty, of sin. The consequence of sin being death, one can likewise say the penalty of sin is death. The term penal is therefore a word which describes the dire situation which was “transmitted to all our kind like some pollution from disease,” the “curse of a just condemnation” that “fell on all mankind.” Curse, likewise, refers to the mark of death; to be cursed thus means to be marked for death, bound to death as a consequence of one’s action.

The term substitution means that rather than having man eternally bound to the consequence of his disobedience, which is to say death, Christ instead submitted Himself via injustice to man’s just death in order to remit man’s just death, to provide a new ontological starting-point for man unto eternal life in Him, or in St. Maximus the Confessor’s words, “another beginning (arche), a second nativity (genesis)” (Ad Thalassium 61.91). Christ substituted His life-giving death with man’s just death so that this penalty, his just death, could be undone. In the words quoted above: “the curse of a just condemnation is loosed by the unjust punishment inflicted on the Just.”

The term atonement is simply the term which signifies the work of Christ to restore man to a right relation with God, with Truth, with Life, etc. Though it could be expounded to much greater lengths, it is arguably the least controversial term in the present discussion, and so will not be discussed further here.

The logic of PSA is thus that Christ trampled down death by death in order that He might bestow life to those trapped by the penalty of sin, which is death.

It is not, however, sufficient to argue for Penal Substitutionary Atonement on the basis of a single hymn or mere logic-chopping. It is necessary also to demonstrate from the Fathers that PSA is a right interpretation of Scripture. It has been said by some that PSA did not exist prior to Anselm, but nothing could be further from the truth.

To begin, though it will only be briefly indicated here, a well-researched article was written concerning St. Athanasius’ (4th Century) view of the Atonement by Khaled Anatolios in On the Tree of the Cross: Georges Florovsky and the Patristic Doctrine of the Atonement, entitled, “Creation and Salvation in St Athanasius of Alexandria” (59-72). Though he never explicitly mentions the term “Penal Substitutionary Atonement,” all throughout he demonstrates that Athanasius’ view is consistent with it. According to him: “Athanasius argues that the death of Christ is salvific in part precisely because it is a fulfillment of divine justice” (69). Continuing:

“God’s subsequent work of salvation cannot simply abrogate this law but must fulfill it, and that is why Christ had to die in order to bring about the forgiveness of sins and our salvation. ‘It was absurd,’ says Athanasius, ‘for the law to be annulled before being fulfilled’” (69).

Since Christ works our salvation through death, according to Anatolios’ reading of Athanasius, this also “speaks of Christ’s salvific death as annulling the penalty and repaying the debt of sin on our behalf and thereby fulfilling the demands of divine justice” (63).

The next Church Father to look at is St. Maximus the Confessor, whose “Ad Thalassium 61” provides a veritable definition of Penal Substitutionary Atonement (italics added):

The Logos of God, who is fully divine by nature, became fully human, being composed just like us of an intellectual soul and a passible body, save only without sin. … in His love for humanity, He willingly appropriated the pain which is the end of human nature… He did this in order that, by suffering unjustly, He might uproot the principle of our being conceived through unrighteous pleasure, which tyrannizes our human nature. Moreover, He did it so that, with the Lord’s own death being not a penalty exacted for that principle of pleasure, like other human beings, but rather a death specifically directed against that principle, He might erase the just finality which human nature encounters in death, since His own end did not have, as the cause of its existence, the illicit pleasure on account of which He came and which He subjected to His righteous punishment. For in truth it was necessary that the Lord - who is by nature wise and just and capable - not, in His wisdom, ignore the means of curing us, nor, in His justice, arbitrarily save humanity when it had fallen under sin by its own free will, nor, in His omnipotence, falter in bringing the healing of humanity to completion. … He exhibited the equity of His justice in the magnitude of His condescension, when He willingly submitted to the condemnation imposed on our passibility and turned that very passibility into an instrument for eradicating sin and the death which is its consequence (Ad Thalassium 61.89).

An extremely profound passage, the logic of PSA is given in its fullness. St. Maximus demonstrates that the conditions of the Fall produce in man a principle of sin which works unto death, and that Christ willingly appropriated human death despite not having that principle of death within Himself. God’s justice, according to Maximus, cannot arbitrarily be set aside, for God’s justice is not an arbitrary imposition on reality, but functions as an internal condition within man unto death such that Christ, in order to heal mankind, took this death on Himself by taking on the just punishment of human sin. God does not arbitrarily forgive the consequence of sin, which is death, for, according to Maximus, because sin is a principle which produces death, merely forgiving sinful acts will not touch the principle of sin in mankind, by which it is bound up with death “by its own free will.” Forgiving sin “arbitrarily” would not solve this sin-death problem, for it is bound up with human willing, and is not merely an issue of wiping some slate clean. The very principle of sin must be dealt with, death itself must be defeated, and so Christ must substitute Himself for mankind in death in order to take on mankind’s death, i.e. the penalty of sin, in order to convert death into the very means of destroying death. If Christ did not perform a penal substitutionary atonement, then, according to Maximus salvation would be rendered impossible.

A subsequent Church Father, St. John of Damascus, like Athanasius and Maximus also far prior to Anselm (12th Century), gives an explicit treatment of PSA in two places. The first is from Book III of On the Orthodox Faith, chapter 25, “Concerning the Appropriation” (italics added):

It is to be observed that there are two appropriations: one that is natural and essential, and one that is personal and relative. The natural and essential one is that by which our Lord in His love for man took on Himself our nature and all our natural attributes, becoming in nature and truth man, and making trial of that which is natural: but the personal and relative appropriation is when any one assumes the person of another relatively, for instance, out of pity or love, and in his place utters words concerning him that have no connection with himself. And it was in this way that our Lord appropriated both our curse and our desertion, and such other things as are not natural: not that He Himself was or became such, but that He took upon Himself our personality and ranked Himself as one of us. Such is the meaning in which this phrase is to be taken: Being made a curse for our sakes.

From the foregoing it is clearly argued that Christ “appropriated both our curse and our desertion,” doing so “for our sakes.” Mankind had a curse, which is death, and in order to heal us Christ appropriated it. He received the penalty in order to substitute His life for our death.

The second discussion by St. John of Damascus is from chapter 27 of the same work, “Concerning the fact that the divinity of the Word remained inseparable from the soul and the body, even at our Lord's death, and that His subsistence continued one” (italics added):

Since our Lord Jesus Christ was without sin (for He committed no sin, He Who took away the sin of the world, nor was there any deceit found in His mouth) He was not subject to death, since death came into the world through sin. He dies, therefore, because He took on Himself death on our behalf, and He makes Himself an offering to the Father for our sakes. For we had sinned against Him, and it was meet that He should receive the ransom for us, and that we should thus he delivered from the condemnation.

It will be observed that the foregoing is in reference to what has been called the “ransom” theory of the Atonement. What is key to note, however, is the phrase: “He took on Himself our death on our behalf.” He does not take on His death on our behalf, but our death on our behalf. Christ becomes man and so substitutes Himself in order to take on the death which man deserved, all in order to give man His life. Rather than getting distracted by discussions of to whom the ransom was paid, the principle by which Damascene is arguing is the PSA principle, that, for one, there is a penalty or consequence for sin, for “death came into the world through sin.” Death follows upon sin, and so to take on our death is to take on the penalty of our sin, to take on our penalty, and since Christ did this “on our behalf” it was thus substitutionary, hence penal substitution: “He received the ransom for us.” Taking on our death, i.e. paying our ransom, He thus takes our death (which is to say our penalty) upon Himself so that His death can stand in place of our death and so that our just death as a consequence can be overcome by His eternal life.

The last Church Father to be discussed here lived immediately before Anselm, and that is St. Symeon the New Theologian. From a collection of his homilies esteemed by St. Theophan the Recluse, and translated by Fr. Seraphim Rose of blessed memory, the first homily from The First Created Man is a wonderful presentation of Penal Substitutionary Atonement.

St. Symeon teaches: “When God condemns for something, He gives also a sentence, and His sentence becomes deed and an eternal chastisement, and there is no longer any possibility of annihilating this chastisement which has come from the decree of God” (43). In other words, the imposition of a chastisement is not arbitrary, but finds its root from the decreed will of God. It takes on an eternal dimension, and as Maximus observed of sin and death, becomes a principle which operates within man. In a sense, death is both the seed and the fruit of sin, and so sin must be dealt with in a way which precludes a mere arbitrary wave of the divine hand.

Those who would put a wedge between God and His decree have inserted a blasphemous arbitrariness to God’s law. God’s law is not some “other thing,” something which one could play against God Himself, that He would set aside as if He had some other act of will which could play against His first act of will. God’s law is a reflection of His simple and uncompounded nature, and His will is not some appendage or outgrowth of His Person. As St. John of Damascus states in the 9th chapter of the first book of his work On the Orthodox Faith: “The Divinity is simple and uncompounded.” Thus, to set God against His will as if He would simply erase the consequence of sin without rectifying the very principle of sin and death which is bound up with man’s very mode of being and willing would be monstrous. As St. Symeon states of man, “he became corruptible, and as corruptible, mortal” (44).

To assert that God did not to fulfill the penalty of man’s sin, which is death, would be to assert that God has not actually trampled down our death by His death, which would be to rupture the inner unity of our being caught up in Christ’s Resurrection. If it is not our death that He died on the Cross, then it is not His Life that is ours in Resurrection.

St. Symeon continues, “The sentence of God remains forever as an eternal chastisement. And all of us men became both corruptible and mortal, and there is nothing that might set aside this great and frightful sentence” (44). In other words, what we will see, is that not even Christ sought to escape this great and frightful sentence; He, too, chose to undergo the penalty of sin despite being sinless: “For this reason the Almighty Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, came so as to humble Himself in place of Adam” (44). This is the very logic of PSA, for Christ came in order to stand in place of Fallen Man so that Fallen Man can be raised with Christ. The Resurrection is meaningless if we are not caught up in that Resurrection of Christ, and humans cannot be raised in the Resurrection of Christ if Christ did not unite Himself to man in man’s just death, death being the penalty of sin. It is by taking on man’s penalty that Christ unites man to His mercy, and so PSA is a way of describing this mechanism, in a manner of speaking, by which Christ identifies with us in death so that we can be identified with Him in life, substituting Himself into our place so that the condemnation of death can fall upon Him rather than us and so that the Life and Resurrection that He is can be made ours.

The New Theologian continues to unfold the logic of PSA, stating there is “a certain great and fearful mystery, namely… that Christ, the Sinless One, should suffer, and through this [suffering, therefore] Adam, who had sinned, might receive forgiveness” (46). It is precisely in the vicarious suffering of death that Adam is forgiven in Christ. If Christ had not taken on the penalty of suffering death, then Adam could not have been forgiven. The logic of penal substitution is given in a beautiful series of substitutions:

“For this [forgiveness] also, in place of the tree of knowledge, there was the Cross; in place of the stepping of the feet by which our first ancestors walked to the forbidden tree, and in place of their stretching out of their hands in order to take of the fruit of the tree, there were nailed to the Cross the innocent feet and hands of Christ; in place of the tasting of the fruit, there was the tasting of gall and vinegar, and in place of the death of Adam, the death of Christ” (46).

St. Symeon asks and then answers:

“And in what does this dispensation consist? One Person of the Holy Trinity, namely the Son and Word of God, having become Incarnate, offered Himself in the flesh as a sacrifice to the Divinity of the Father, and of the Son Himself, and of the Holy Spirit, in order that the first transgression of Adam might be benevolently forgiven for the sake of this great and fearful work” (46).

Christ died, then, in order to receive the forgiveness for Adam’s sin, sacrificing Himself in Adam’s place, dying the penalty of Adam’s sin, all in order to meet the just demands and eternal decrees of the righteous God and “that by its power there might be performed another new birth and re-creation of man in Holy Baptism” (46). Implicating the Trinity in the entire economy of salvation, thus the caricatures of Christ merely appeasing an angry Father are simply unfounded critiques of PSA, for they presuppose a wedge between the Father and the Son which is a violation of first principles of Christian theology, and fail as critiques before they even begin.  

St. Symeon is unambiguous:

“Since Adam had fallen under a curse, and through him all people also who proceed from him, therefore the sentence [i.e. penalty] of God concerning this could in no way be annihilated; and therefore Christ was for us [on our behalf] a curse, through being hung upon the tree of the Cross, so as to offer Himself as a sacrifice to His Father, as has been said, and to annihilate the sentence [the penalty] of God by the superabundant worth of the sacrifice” (47).

The foregoing is for all intents and purposes a Patristic definition of Penal Substitutionary Atonement. Moreover, and in light of all that has been said thus far, let it no more be said the Church Fathers do not teach PSA. They do, and as has been shown, from the Festal Menaion to St. Athanasius to St. Maximus the Confessor to St. John of Damascus to St. Symeon the New Theologian there is a common vision of the Atonement that includes PSA, and all yet prior to Anselm of Canterbury.

St. Symeon, however, is not yet done:

“Being shamed by such a sacrifice (I speak thus), and honoring it, the Father could not leave it in the hands of death. Therefore He annihilated His sentence [penalty] and resurrected from the dead first of all and at the beginning Him Who had given Himself as a sacrifice for the redemption and as a replacement [substitute] for men who are of the same race as Himself” (47-8).

What is also clear from the foregoing is that this is not merely proof-texting, not merely a stray line here and there cobbled together. The Fathers gave substantive discussions of this issue that leave PSA unambiguous and unassailable, for as St. Symeon has been shown above to teach: “all our sinfulness is mortified by the death of Christ on the Cross” (48). Christ nails our sins to the Cross such that His death satisfies the righteous decree of God against mankind: He suffered in our place, took on the punishment due to us, took on our sentence “as a replacement for men who are of the same race as Himself.”

The logic and doctrine of Penal Substitutionary Atonement is Patristic. Moreover, it predates Western conceptions of it. Though PSA is not the only way to understand the Atonement, it certainly has a place of honor at the table, and can thus be proclaimed boldly on Scriptural, Liturgical (as was shown from the Menaion above), and Patristic grounds. Whoever would deny PSA must therefore contend with the saints treated above, and let those who would wrangle against PSA know that no amount of pointing out other ways of describing the Atonement will suffice to contradict PSA, just as no amount of proving apples disproves oranges. What is more, defeating caricatures of PSA will never address PSA itself, whether this be angry Father absurdities, or false charges of “binding God by necessity,” or dividing the Father and the Son, or any other of the typical anti-PSA tropes. PSA understood rightly, as was by the saints discussed above, is a beautiful and awesome doctrine, worthy of reverent, prayerful, disciplined consideration.

-Fr. Joshua Schooping
This series on Penal Substitutionary Atonement began here, and continues here, here, and here.

The Orthodox Teaching on the Sinlessness of Mary

The Orthodox Church teaches that the Theotokos was sinless in the sense of having never personally sinned. She was sinless by grace, needing the Savior, whereas Christ was sinless by nature, being the Savior.

How can this be?

The notion of the Fall means that we are born needing the Savior, and not as a consequence of anything we have personally done. We sin because we are Fallen; we are not Fallen because we sin. Our condition of being Fallen precedes our personal acts of sin. Thus, even though we may have never personally sinned, we are still constitutionally Fallen, which is to say the principle of sin and death is still operational within us even if we have not sinned personally.

Scripturally, this can be explained by what happened to the prophet Jeremiah: "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you (from qadash, meaning sanctified, hallowed, made holy); I appointed you a prophet to the nations" (Jeremiah 1:5).

In other words, if Jeremiah can be sanctified by God from the womb, then it is not impossible for the Theotokos to likewise be sanctified from the womb. This is not quite the same as the Roman Catholic doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, which the Orthodox Church does not affirm, but is instead the Biblical doctrine that one can be sanctified from the womb, prior to any personal act of sin, being made holy by a special act of the Lord on some person's behalf, preserved from acts of sin by grace and so set apart for some unique or special work on His behalf.

This does not mean that Jeremiah was sinless by nature, but by grace, and so he still required the Savior because his constitutional position, so to speak, was that of being one among the Fallen, despite being sanctified from the womb. Likewise, the Theotokos was one among the Fallen, though without ever having personally sinned in any way, set apart and sanctified in a way surpassing even that of the prophet Jeremiah, for she bore in her person the very Word of God.

An Atonement Worth Considering: Orthodox Philosophical and Theological Reflections

Understanding the Economy of salvation in Christ holistically, St. Gregory Nazianzen stated: “What is not assumed is not healed.” What St. Gregory meant is that it is the very act of Incarnation which initiates salvation in that the eternal Son takes on human nature completely, and if it were not so then human nature would not be healed. In other words, righteousness considered as such would not be sufficient for our salvation, which was the soteriological problem of the Arian heresy. They affirmed Christ’s sinlessness, but denied His true and complete divinity by claiming He was merely a creature, and thus denied man’s participation in the very Life of God by reducing it to participation in the life of some mere, albeit special, creature. Since He was, according to the Arians, a perfectly righteous creature, we can see that merely being righteous is not sufficient for man’s total salvation. By being united with Christ God in His very Person, however, His divine attributes become ours through participation (2 Peter 1:4). This is why it is said: What Christ is by nature (divine), we become by grace (divine).

The imputed righteousness of Christ, according to Orthodoxy, has an ontological ground and consequently an existential character. Christ actually imparts the energy of His righteousness into us, enabling us to grow in real sanctification because of His Spirit's working from within us. Yes, the imputed righteousness is an objective and legal fact (centered in the Cross and based on the entire economy of Christ from Incarnation to the sending of the Holy Spirit) that we can take confidence in, but it is not ontologically antinomian. Rather than merely “describing” or “labeling” us as righteous, it is something imparted, something that transforms us from within, from the ground of our being, and which thus extends through the entire activity of our being, influencing thought, word, and deed. Imputation is coextensive with impartation. This is related to the emphasis in Orthodoxy on theosis, for Christ did not merely or only accomplish something in the past whose consequence is felt today as if it were a soteriological tidal wave stretching across two millennia, but instead is right now imparting the Spirit. What happened on the historic Cross is inwardly and presently connected with the living and present Christ such that its effects are given now by the Living Christ who sends the Spirit now.

Faith is the very life of God in the soul such that, to the degree one trusts in and relies on the Lord, to that degree one has God’s life within. It is the energy of this divine Life within us which has a soteriological effect on us. It is the living Christ within us which causes us to live and to have life, and thus salvation is not effected by divinely legal labels as if the Law of God could be reduced in scope to such things. The Life of God must be present in the soul, and His presence cannot help but produce sanctifying effects. This is what faith touches and is the very expression of. Faith is not merely or fundamentally some finite dogmatic content considered as ideational knowledge, that is the faith of demons (James 2:19). Although dogmatic content is necessarily involved in faith, considered in itself faith is a living energy. It is the energy of trusting, relying, and leaning on that which the dogmatic content points to, and which cannot be reduced to the merely ideational (or empirical). And it grows. Faith is something that moves, lives, and breathes with the life of God, the very Life of God in the soul of man. This is the sense in which Paul states that he seeks and is at pains to have Christ formed within a person (Galatians 4:19).

Concerning Christ’s taking on the whole of human nature, it is vital to remember that He is eternal God. Therefore, Christ is sinless intrinsically and by nature. Sin according to Orthodoxy is not merely considered rule-breaking, but is the consequent manifestation of the soul's prior inward alienation from God. God is Life and Light and Goodness, and so sin is what happens as a consequence of the heart, soul, and mind first turning away from Life and Light and Goodness, from God. Without Goodness, the soul is bound to sin as a consequence of a lack of said Goodness. Without Light, the soul is bound to grope in darkness as a consequence of its lack of Light. Without Life, the soul is bound to death, again, as a consequence of the lack of Life. It is not that one sins and as a consequence God removes His Life, Light, and Goodness from the soul; no, one turns from God and therefore foregoes Life, Light, and Goodness and consequently has no option outside of Death, Darkness, and Sin.

The mind is darkened by the passions, by the tumult of inner thoughts, feelings, and emotions, and, as we succumb to the darkening energy of the passions, as we turn from the Light of God, sin is the inexorable result. The Fall in this sense means that we are predisposed at birth towards the darkening engendered by the passions such that our minds are beclouded and fail to respond to God, and so as sinful creatures our soul is finally exhausted and overpowered by death. In other words, our sinful acts are a consequence and expression of our Fallen, sinful being, and thus it is not that our sinful acts corrupt our nature, but that our fallen human nature corrupts our acts.

Christ’s sinlessness, according to the same principle, is thus a consequence of His being, and not of His acts considered as such. Act follows being, act proceeds from being, and, conversely, being precedes act, which is to say being is the ground of action, and so His pure Being produces pure Act, and our Fallen being produces corrupt act, indeed corrupts all of our acts. It is the law of sin bound up with our being that produces our sinful acts (Cf. Rom 7:23, 7:25, 8:2), and which for the sake of Atonement requires the death of our death, and not merely the clearing away of our sin. Christ gave us much more than a clean slate.

Though of course Christ was and is sinless, some Orthodox theologians may shy away from emphasizing this, in a certain manner of speaking, for fear of giving the impression that His sinlessness was obtained by some virtue other than His intrinsically holy Being. Jesus is sinless because He is an intrinsically holy, divine Person, and thus, even considered as Incarnate, He is not sinless simply because He managed to avoid sinning. We, however, are sinners, though not because we sin, and even if we avoid sinning. We sin because we are sinners, Fallen and in need of a Savior. Sin is, as said above, not merely rule-breaking; sin, considered as an act, is the result of alienation from God, and not something that causes a rupture with God as if consequent to the sin. We come into the world Fallen, which is to say in the condition of being sinners, prior to any act of sin. Our sins are a result of our inward alienation from the Life of God, and so the principle of sin, which is to say death, working in us therefore “predates” any particular instance of sin.

Concerning the Protestant emphasis on the forensic aspect of Christ’s imputation of righteousness, it is true to say that Christ’s righteousness is imputed to us in a legal manner, but it is likewise necessary to stress that it is not “merely” legal. Biblically, the Law is not anything like our contemporary sense of secular law, centered in the courthouse with teams of lawyers seeking arbitrary loopholes to often arbitrary laws. The Law of God is not centered in the courthouse, but in the Temple; the Tablets of the Law were in the Ark of the Covenant, in the Holy of Holies. In other words, the Law of God understood Biblically is an expression of God’s will, which is an expression of His simple nature, and thus speaks to the nature of the whole reality of His Person and the manner of relation both with Him and the humans who are made in His image, and also with the world He created. As St. John of Damascus states in his work On the Orthodox Faith: "The Divinity is simple and uncompounded."

The foregoing is why the Orthodox tend not to stress the merely legal imputation, though it would be improper to reject the legal aspect as long as it is understood in its fuller, theological sense. Christ therefore gives more than merely some righteousness which He possesses; He gives us Himself and thus everything which is His becomes ours. It is He who lives in us, and thus His righteousness lives in us by virtue of Him being present in us, and not as though righteousness were a detachable object or impersonal imputable substance which He places in us as if from afar. Rather, He comes to indwell us and to make His imputed righteousness operate within us organically as it were from within Him who is within us.

What is more, God is not Omnipotent Judge only, for He is also Life, Light, Love, and Wisdom, and since God is “simple,” which is to say that He is not inwardly divided in Himself according to His Attributes but is a unity, God’s Law is thus not merely an expression of absolute Authority, but also of Life, Light, Love, and Wisdom. Therefore, to stray from the Law is to stray from Life, Light, Love, and Wisdom. As man fails to keep the Law, he also fails to attain Life, Light, Love, and Wisdom. These are divine Attributes, and they are also existential realities. It is thus not merely an issue of obedience, but of actually touching Life, Light, etc. Therefore, Christ’s fulfilling of the righteousness of the Law on our behalf is not merely a legal correction, but a much deeper and more comprehensive Atonement that is bound up with transmitting Life to those who are dead, Light to those in darkness, Love to those who are lost, Forgiveness to those under wrath, and Wisdom to those bound by ignorance. This is all a single action of Christ viewed under several different headings; we distinguish them in our mind, but in reality they are one.

In light of the foregoing, it is finally worth stressing that it is not so much that humans have a sin problem, but that, as Father Seraphim Rose once stated, we have a death problem. The consequence, which is to say the penalty, of sin is death, and so the reason sin is such a problem is because it inexorably ends in death; it is the very principle of death working itself out in our souls. And since the sin in us is the power of death working itself out in us, sinful acts are the expression of this principle of sin and death at work in the soul. Christ, being God in the flesh, goes down into death, takes on the consequence and penalty of sin which is none other than death and, since He is Life, defeats death by His death, His intrinsic Life exploding death from within. Thus He, the Living One, emerges from the Tomb in Resurrection, Ascends to heaven, Sits at the Right Hand of the Father, and then Sends the Holy Spirit to us to feed us this His eternal life via the Eucharistic life of the Church. He took on our death so that His Life can become our life, for "what is not assumed is not healed." Thus it is vital to remember that Christ’s sinlessness is a necessary consequence of Who He Is, the Living One, and thus, because of Who He Is, what is by nature His, i.e. Eternal Life, becomes ours through our faithful participation in Him.

-Fr. Joshua Schooping
This series on Penal Substitutionary Atonement continues here, here, here, and here.

The Straying Christian's Arbitrary Dividing of Law From Morality

Some Christians, in reflecting on the making of law, attempt to be “fair” by saying Christians ought not seek to legislate Christian morality. This is seen to be wrong and oppressive, and so rather than advocate laws that are consistent with Christian morality, they decide to advocate laws that are inconsistent with Christian morality, such as transgender laws, and justify this by standing on radically secular moral pluralism.

For example, the transgender bathroom bill asserts that a person’s personal feeling about their gender has the force of law. What, however, is the moral principle justifying this law, and how is it that some Christians find themselves defending this alien moral principle?

That for a Christian this is intellectually and morally indefensible, and is tantamount to a denial of Christ, is what the following argument seeks to show.

All law is the expression of some moral system. Morality is at the root of law. For example, thievery is illegal because it is first determined to be immoral, i.e. that it is a violation of property rights. The illegality of it follows upon its being considered immoral. The same holds for murder, which is a violation of the divine right to life. The same principle of morality also holds for traffic laws, which are established on the ethic that it is wrong to endanger people’s lives.

This is not to say that all things that are immoral are also illegal; it is to say that at the root of law is the principle of right and wrong, i.e. morality.

Why does this matter?

The answer is that when determining the legality or illegality of some action there is also some moral system presupposed by the discussion. To speak of morality is to speak of some guiding principle and system which determines whether something is said to be wrong or right, permissible or impermissible, and finally legal or illegal. The presupposed moral system provides the criteria by which the case is assessed and determined.

Thus, when society enters into the discussion of whether something is right or wrong, what is at the heart of the question is the competing moral systems. According to radical secularism, the problem with legislating religious morality is in determining which religion’s morality. To adopt one religion’s moral system at the expense of others is, according to them, to embrace an oppressive religious tyranny. For radical secularism, this problem is insoluble and so, in the interests of justice, religion is removed as a relevant criteria for moral and legal reasoning. But which moral system’s notion of justice is actually being advocated here?

The problem at the heart of the critical question, "which religion's morality?" is not actually avoided by removing religion from the equation. Why? Because there are still remaining moral systems and ideologies, and so the question remains: "Which moral system?" and "Whose moral ideology?" Not all are compatible, coherent, or even moral.

Why consent to one moral system or another such that one of them is privileged with the force of law?

In the case of radical secularism, the presupposition is that of the removal of the transcendental from the moral equation, and consequently from the legal equation. The very logic of radical secularism necessitates that God be absent as a consideration. In short, radical secularism is by very definition godless. Therefore, atheistic approaches to morality and law are a fortiori given precedence in radical secular approaches to morality and law.

Since law is a consequence of whatever moral system it is sponsored by, then radical secular law becomes a force of and for atheism. Law becomes an arm of atheism. Since God is excluded in principle, the atheistic moral system produces laws consistent with its inner atheistic logic, inexorably alienating the transcendental. Law ends up simply enforcing what is available to atheistic interests.

The question then must be addressed, what inherently godless morality and consequently godless approach to law is available to a Christian? Laissez faire? Relativism? Nihilism? Authoritarianism? Utilitarianism? Pure democracy? Republicanism? Tyranny?

If a Christian must first exclude God from his legal reasoning so as to advocate some radically secular moral system and law in order to be “fair,” then the Christian is bound to legislate against Christ Himself. He sets up a system in the name of some notion of justice whose logic militates against Christ. In dividing off the Church from the State, he creates a godless State that by definition cannot incorporate anything of God. Thus these Christians deny Christ by burning incense to Caesar.

Dismantling Transgenderism

Following and building upon the thought of the previous article, there is a persistent confusion regarding transgenderism that is, oddly, invisible to many advocates of transgenderism. The confusion is that transgenderism in any way makes sense, that it is not simply the product of deeply held confusion.

In an attempt at making this simple: If a person has a penis, and having a penis doesn’t make this person a man, then having a vagina can’t make him a woman, and having a vagina is not what makes a woman a woman. Having a penis doesn't make a man any less a woman, and having a vagina doesn't make a woman any less a man.

That's the confusion. One need not read any further. According to transgenderism, no man or woman could ever even be identified as existing, either in the past, the present, or the future. All the properties of gender identification have been removed, and since none could ever be found, the ideas of man and woman are rendered empty sets.

In other words, if a biological male says his male biology doesn't determine his gender, then appropriating the female sex parts (or identifying with those who have them) won't and can’t help because the intrinsic connection is denied, according to their position, between sex and gender.

If femaleness doesn't come from female biology, then saying one is a woman can no longer mean anything. The word is totally emptied of content.

On the other hand, if one affirms the gender binary, then not even a sex change can address the problem. Clearly, sex change only changes the outer appearance, not the DNA. The sex organ is rendered no more than a tattoo, and just as a tattoo of a dragon on one's arm doesn't make one's arm a dragon, neither does surgically affixing/removing something to/from one's body make their whole person that something.

If having a penis doesn't make someone a man, then acquiring a vagina can't make him a woman, because the sex organ has been treated as non-determining. If the sex organ is determining, then the genetically produced organ that one is born with has already determined the case, and change is in principle impossible.

But if the sex organ is non-determining, then no amount of changing it will make the man into a woman.

What is more, if vaginas don’t make a woman a woman, then dresses don’t make a woman, either, nor does lipstick, sexy lingerie, nor does a lisp, nor any kind of vocal affectation, nor does anything. The notion of being a woman according to transgender ideology so empties the term of content that the very idea of a woman cannot even in principle point to anything. There is therefore according to this ideology zero justification for claiming that one “really is” some gender, some “other” gender, or any gender.

Further, it is the transgender person's own position which works against him in this case. It is the transgender who operates with the gender binary, who upholds and confirms the gender binary he seeks to deny. He needs the gender binary in order to make his claim, but this in the end shows how completely self-contradictory his position is.

The transgender man says he “really” is a woman. That's the gender binary at work. He is affirming that there is some reality called “woman.”

Now, at the same time, they're saying their sex doesn't determine their gender, but if their sex doesn't determine their gender, then not only are they reinforcing the gender binary, they are showing that changing to having female organs could in principle never make them females.

Once the cake is eaten, it can no longer be had, and so they cannot both have their cake and eat it, too.

They could not know that females are their real gender because females are only known through their biological sex identity. That's why it doesn't make sense. If the female organs don't determine their identity, then females cannot in principle ever even be identified in the world. But if they can be identified in the world, then gender is simply an extension of sex, and since sex is fixed from birth, gender “identity” is fixed from birth.

A woman with a vagina could say she “really is” a man, but how can we know she is a man without pointing to genitalia? How can she identify a man in the world except by pointing to his genitalia? Now, if pointing to her female genitalia proves nothing, then pointing to a man’s genitalia proves nothing. Saying one really is a man means nothing in this case because one only points out a man through reference to biology.

If gender identity has nothing to do with biological sex, then it bears no connection with maleness, femaleness, redness, greenness, or anything in the real world, only the world of opinion and imagination.

Though this suffers from the tedium of repetition, it seems that people are still genuinely confused about this, and hopefully this will at least give voice to a clarity whether the clarity is heeded or not.

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Update May 17, 2016


The argument that gender is merely a social construct that has no relation to biology so utterly trivializes the notions of male and female that they cease being meaningful referents.

Therefore, not the imposition onto the transgenderists of an alien belief system, it bears being emphasized that the beliefs and actions of the transgenderists are of themselves self-contradictory and ultimately self-defeating. If a man believes that his genetic sex is non-determinative, then he has already made it impossible, according to the consequences of his own beliefs, to match his outside appearance with his inside feelings so as to appropriate the other gender. Why? Because he has already affirmed that his genetic sex does not determine his gender, therefore a vagina cannot make him a woman. Being a woman, according to his own belief, does not require a vagina. But if it does require biological femininity, then the fact that he is not biologically female seals the deal against him. Affirming the very thing he denies, that is why he is self-contradictory, and as such nothing is being ideologically imposed upon him except the consequence of his own ideas.