The Substitution Motif, Objections to Penal Substitution, and Karl FREAKIN' Barth
#ReadingRutledge Week 7
It is Holy Week! Yesterday was Palm Sunday and we are joining Jesus in his arrival in Jerusalem on his way to his crucifixion and death. This is also our final week reading The Crucifixion. We are scheduled to finish reading on Maundy Thursday, but if you have fallen a bit behind schedule feel free to take time on Good Friday and Holy Saturday to read as much as you can.
Feel free to skip a chapter or two. Last week Fleming Rutledge was a guest on The Russell Moore Show discussing The Crucifixion. She mentioned that she wrote this book as a resource and each chapter stands alone.
Don’t skip the chapter on substitution—it’s important! But feel free to skip other chapters if you want. The reading schedule is at the bottom of this post.
Last week we finished up the chapter 10 “The Descent into Hell,” which I will comment on in a moment. Then we read the chapter on substitution and started the chapter on recapitulation. I will review recapitulation next week because I want to devote most of my attention to the chapter on the substitution metaphor.
Rutledge devotes more attention in book to substitution than any other metaphor. Note the number of pages devoted to each of the eight motifs:
Passover: 18 pages
Blood sacrifice: 52 pages
Ransom/Redemption: 19 pages
Judgment: 45 pages
Christus Victor: 47 pages
The Descent into Hell: 67 pages (this includes an important excurse on the nature of evil)
Substitution: 74 pages
Recapitulation: 35 pages
So I intend to devote most of the post to reviewing and summarizing her chapter on the substitution image of atonement, but first lets return to the descent into hell.
Hell…Yes
Jesus’ descent into hell was one of a liberation mission to set free those imprisoned there. According to Rutledge, “The Word preached in the prison of hell is able effectively to destroy the zophus [i.e. darkness] by bringing the light of Christ” (457). Thus my subheading in last week’s post: “Hell…No”.
But for Rutledge hell as an eschatological domain has its place, “Without a concept of hell, Christian faith is sentimental and evasive, unable to stand up to the reality of the world. Without an unflinching grasp of the radical nature of evil, Christian faith would be little more than wishful thinking” (458). Thus my subheading in this week’s post: “Hell…Yes”.
She again describes hell as a dominion, the domain of evil, wickedness, stupidity, and despair. This is helpful language noting the metaphorical nature of hell described by Jesus as outer darkness, a place a weeping and gnashing of teeth. This domain of hell is not a literal place with literal flames and a literal lake of fire. As I have described it over the years, hell is the awful, torturous experience of those outside of the presence of God, outside the kingdom of God. It is the “grey town,” another helpful metaphor, one given to us by C.S. Lewis in The Great Divorce.
The Substitution
Alas we arrive to the biblical motif Rutledge spends most of her time discussing—substitution. In her conversation with Russell Moore, she noted that all the biblical metaphors for atonement could be categorized under two headings: Christus Victor and substitution.
I appreciate her attempt to rescue the theme of substitution from the “overly rationalistic, schematic versions of penal substitution as found in Reformed scholasticism” (465). I argue, along with N.T. Wright and others, that there are “penal” aspects to the atonement, but I contend that God does not do the punishing.
“You killed the Author of life” Peter preached, “whom God raised from the dead” (Acts 3:15). That “you” is not “the Jews” but humanity. We punished Jesus. Moreover God the Father did not condemn his Son. Rather God “condemned sin in the flesh” of the Son of God (Romans 8:3). Sin/Death is the problem for which the death of Jesus is the solution.
I fully reject any form of penal substitution which creates a mechanism out of atonement whereby Jesus’ death “turns” God towards us or satisfies God’s demand and desire to punish for sin. Brad Jersak and Michael Hardin edited a helpful collection of essays—Stricken by God? Nonviolent Identification an the Victory of Christ, which critiques popular versions of penal substitution in Reformed circles. I found Rutledge’s brief critique of Jersak’s argument, which she calls “unsubtle” and “formulaic,” to be a bit of an overreach. Granted Rutledge’s remarks are in a single footnote on page 465 and she is only reviewing Jersak’s chapter in Stricken by God? I’d recommending reading Jersak’s more nuanced, biblical, and less-than-formulaic treatment of this subject in A More Christlike God.
The heart of substitution for Rutledge is not only that Jesus died on our behalf, the purpose of atonement found in other metaphors, but that Jesus died in our place. The Greek prepositions huper and peri are both translated “for” and can mean different things in different places. At times these Greek words imply an exchange… “this” for “that”…most notably in Galatians 3:13 and 2 Corinthians 5:21.
Substitution in Romans
While Christus Victor is the dominate metaphor in Romans, particularly in 5:12-21, we also see blood sacrifice (Romans 3:24-25) and other metaphors in Romans. Rutledge asks in reflection to the Adam/Christ contrast in Romans 5, “Does it not follow that by reenacting ‘Adam,’ Christ put himself in Adam’s place?” (470).
Furthermore she asks if the flesh of the Son of God as the place where Sin is condemned (Romans 8:3) was a substitute for our flesh? This question grounds atonement in the incarnation. Jesus came in the (very) likeness of human flesh so that God could condemn sin.
Jesus died as a human being because were were responsible for sin, not God. It was our sin that was the problem. And Jesus died as God because only God could defeat death; we were powerless to do so. This idea harkens back to the earlier concept of privatio boni —evil as a privation of the good, evil as nonbeing. God is not responsible for evil because evil has no ontological substance. We are responsible for evil because it is our sin which unleashed darkness on the earth. Jesus came as our human representative to do what we could not do. Sin carried with it the condemnation of death which we bore until Jesus bore it in our place.
For Rutledge, “Paul has been called to witness for an elaborately worked-out doctrine of penal substitution when in fact it can be found nowhere in his thought” (473). Penal substitution is not to be found in Galatians 3 “Christ became a curse for us,” not in 2 Corinthians 5:21 “he made him to be sin…so that in him we might become…,” and not in Romans 3, 5, or 8. The substitution metaphor appears in all three letters of Paul mentioned above, but not penal substitution.
Substitution in Church History
While substitution is not the dominate metaphor use by the Eastern and Western Fathers, it does appear. I particularly appreciated the quote she shared from the second century bishop Melito of Sardis.
Rutledge rightly admits that Anslem’s treatment of satisfaction had influence on the development of Western theology. She admits that Anslem opened a door that led to unfortunate consequences (481). I agree. If we remove satisfaction as a necessary mechanism (God requires satisfaction before God can forgive), we can have ears to hear a more biblical and Trinitarian version of substitution.
Luther, who consistently preached a “gospel of the victorious Christ” (482), used various metaphors and biblical motifs for atonement in his preaching, including substitution. For Luther the way Jesus conquered Sin and Death was by dying on our behalf and in our place. We were under judgment having not believed in Jesus (John 3:17: “those who do not believe are condemned already”) and Jesus came to stand in our place so that judgment might fall upon sin in his very flesh.
We were under “wrath” understood as judgment before we believed. Rutledge again calls us to see the wrath of God metaphorically, “It is essential to read ‘the wrath of God’ as symbolic language. It is a figurative way of expressing the eternal opposition of God to all that would hurt and destroy his good creation” (484). Brad Jersak and I add our Amens!
Objections to Penal Substitution
Rutledge lists the following objections raised against penal substitution, which she offers as a way for us to rethink the model. I appreciate her willingness to admit the problems with the popular forms of penal substitution, even if she does not agree with all the following objections:
It is “crude”
It keeps bad company
It is culturally conditioned
It views the death as attached from the resurrection
It is incoherent, an innocent person cannot take on the guilt of another
It glorifies suffering and encourages masochistic behavior
It is too “theoretical,” too scholastic and abstract
It depicts a vindictive God
It is essentially violent
It does not develop Christian character
It is too individualistic
It is controlled by an emphasis on punishment
It excludes the New Testament apocalyptic viewpoint
I agree that transactional views of the cross that treat the death of Jesus as a mechanism are indeed crude. There are much better ways to talk about the death of Jesus. When Jesus’ blood is reduced to a mechanism, the blight of individualism spreads. Western theologies on the atonement are most helped when they see the cross in the context of Jesus incarnation, resurrection, and ascension. The resurrection is key to understanding the death of Jesus. “If Christ was not raised from the death, we would never have heard of him” (493). Punishment does have it’s place, but the image of punishment is best understood in terms of “exclusion or rejection” (504).
“The penal-substitution model as it was taught in so called Protestant orthodoxy,” according to Rutledge, “needs a thorough overhaul. However, rethinking the substitution motif does not mean eliminating it” (506). To do this kind of rethinking, she calls upon the theological giant of the 20th century—Karl Barth.
Barth on Substitution
In Volume 4 of Church Dogmatics, Barth has a lengthy section on the death of Jesus entitled “The Judge Judged in Our Place.” Rutledge notes that both Hans Boersma’s Violence, Hospitality, and the Cross and Scot McKnight’s A Community Called Atonement, two books on atonement that I have loved, have not made good use of Barth (507). McKnight, she argues in a footnote, hasn’t grasped the full scope of substitution but I read McKnight as attempting to dethrone substitution from it exclusionary place in evangelical theology and preaching. I agree with Rutledge that substitution is a biblical metaphor, but it’s not the only one as some pockets of evangelicalism believe.
The single line from Barth’s Dogmatics in Outline that I found so compelling in rethinking substitution is quoted by Rutledge on page 508.
Man’s reconciliation with God takes place through God putting Himself in man’s place and man being put in God’s place, as a sheer act of Grace. It is the inconceivable miracle which is our reconciliation. - Karl Barth
I hear echoes of Athanasius (“God became man that man might become God”) in this understanding of atonement. I loved this quote so much that I am working to commit it to memory. I wrote “Karl FREAKIN’ Barth!” in my book at the end of this section.
Reading this line from Barth caused me to grab my copy of Dogmatics in Outline of the shelf in order to read this quotation in context. “Man in God’s place,” in what Barth wrote above this quote, is not going to heaven upon death but being raised in Christ to the right hand of God. Barth describes this as substitution but it is a relational and not moral view of “God’s place.”
The grand narrative arc of Scripture from the Garden of Eden to the New Jerusalem coming down from heaven is the story of God’s desire to dwell with God’s people. The hope we have in and through Jesus’ death and resurrection is the hope to dwell with God unhindered and polluted by sin. To be in God’s presence (i.e. God’s place) is not to be morally good like God but to be in right relationship with God.
There is much more to reflect on in Rutledge’s chapter on substitution but it was hard for me to move on from this thought from Barth—God in humanity’s place so humanity could be in God’s place. This kind of substitution is consistent with Trinitarian orthodoxy and Scripture. So good!
Karl FREAKIN’ Barth!!!
I love this much more than when Rutledge cites Barth say, “My turning from God is followed by God’s annihilating turning from me” (517). Sadly no. Sigh. The idea that God would ever turn away from us is the fundamental problem with popular versions of penal substitution. However in the very next line Barth writes, “When it is resisted His love works itself out as death-dealing wrath” (517). This view of the wrath of God in Barth is consistent with Rutledge’s plea for us to cast wrath in a metaphorical light.
I continue to reject the idea that God ever turns from us. Whatever distance we feel between us and God because of our sin cannot deny the closeness of God towards us.
Rutledge agrees…
This sense of the distance between God and his creation must always be held in tension with the intimate closeness of the personal God who draws near to us in grace, or else we are in danger of having no god except the one we have fashioned to suit ourselves. (522)
Mic drop.
We wrap up The Crucifixion this week. Here is our final reading schedule.
Monday, April 3: Pages 553 - 570
Tuesday, April 4: Pages 570 - 586
Wednesday, April 5: Pages 586 - 599
Maundy Thursday, April 6: Pages 599 - 612
Good Friday, April 7
Holy Saturday, April 8
If you are a bit behind, finish up Chapter 11 on Substitution. There is so much more that I didn’t cover in this post on the subject of substitution. Then read the Conclusion— “Condemned into Redemption: The Rectification of the Ungodly.” Finishing the book on Good Friday or Holy Saturday would be epic!
Next week I will reflect on recapitulation, Rutledge’s conclusion, and my overall reflection on the book.
Grace and peace!
I wondered if I was the only reader noticing the blurb on Bradley Jersak! I concur, his book “A More Christlike God” is more representative of his position. I have stayed on track with reading schedule (mostly) simply because this is such a great book! More impressive since I am also reading many other books at this time ( Dale Allison is my new theological crush by the way!) What a tremendous way to venture on the Lenten journey. Thanks for the group read idea, let’s keep it going with more throughout the year!