The End of Christianity (26 page)

Second, if somehow the guilt of humankind was imputed to Jesus, then he really becomes guilty of sin himself. He could no longer be considered innocent. This would solve the problem of punishing an innocent, but it would destroy Christianity because it would make Jesus a sinner himself. Some theologians have tried to avoid this problem by saying that while the guilt and penal consequences
(reatus poena)
of our sins were transferred to Jesus, the actual demerit or corruption
{reatus culpae)
of sin was not.
¹⁴
But this is impossible because guilt and demerit cannot be decoupled. Guilt is the effect, and demerit or sin is the cause. Without sin or demerit, there is nothing for which to be guilty.
¹⁵

So, as stated above, the Evangelical is on the horns of a dilemma. In order to defend penal substitution, he must have either an
unjust Father
or a
sinful Savior.
Either one destroys Evangelical Christianity.

Furthermore, it seems undeniable that the death of Jesus is a human sacrifice. Human sacrifices were common in ancient times. Even conservative Bible scholars acknowledge the prominence of human sacrifices in the ancient world. For example, William Joseph McGlothin writes:

As an expression of religious devotion, human sacrifice has been widespread at certain stages of the race's development. The tribes of western Asia were deeply affected by the practice, probably prior to the settlement of the Hebrews in Palestine, and it continued at least down to the fifth century [BCE]. At times of great calamity, anxiety, and danger, parents sacrificed their children as the greatest and most costly offering which they could make to propitiate the anger of the gods and thus secure their favor and help. There is no intimation in the Bible that enemies or captives were sacrificed; only the offering of children by their parents is mentioned. The belief that this offering possessed supreme value is seen in Micah 6:6…where the sacrifice of the firstborn is the climax of a series of offerings which, in a rising scale of values, are suggested as a means of propitiating the angry Yahweh.
¹⁶

The Old Testament often mentions the matter of human sacrifice. For example, King Ahaz is said to have “made his son pass through the fire,”
¹⁷
a clear reference to human sacrifice (2 Kings 17:17). King Manasseh, likewise, is said to have made his son pass through the fire (2 Kings 21:6). It is clear that some Jews practiced human sacrifice (Jer. 32:35; Judg. 11:29–40; Ezek. 16:21; 20:26; 20:31; 23:37). While Yahweh was displeased with these human sacrifices and forbade them (Lev. 18:21; Deut. 18:10), his main problem with them was that they were offered up to a foreign god. As evangelical author David Dilling says:

The greater offense is not the sacrifice, but the idolatry involved in offering such a sacrifice to a god other than Yahweh. The first commandment is not “Thou shalt not offer human sacrifices,” but “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” The Bible contains no prohibitions of human sacrifice to Yahweh. The only possible exception to this principle is the legislation regarding the redemption of the first-born sons in [Exodus] 13:1–16. This passage, however, does not condemn human sacrifice. On the contrary, it proves that Yahweh had a very definite claim on all the first-born of Israel, whether man or beast.
¹⁸

In fact, Yahweh's explicit approval of humans sacrificed to
himself
is found in Leviticus 27:28–29. One can argue that Yahweh's command to Abraham to offer up Isaac is further evidence that human sacrifice, in principle at least, was an acceptable idea in Old Testament times. God's command to Abraham in Genesis 22 has been unsettling to many a Christian commentator. Conservatives have, for the most part, argued that it was never Yahweh's intention for Abraham to go through with the sacrifice, but that he was simply testing Abraham's faith. Dilling, however, takes great issue with this notion. He writes:

The most frequent objection raised against the Biblical presentation of Yahweh and his relationship to sacrifice is that sacrifice, whether of human beings or of beasts, is an element of primitive religion, and that Yahweh really desires not sacrifice at all but obedience This view, carried to its logical conclusion, would eliminate the necessity of the sacrificial death of Christ. This in turn eliminates the atonement and thereby abnegates the whole Christian Gospel.
¹⁹

Dilling is correct. If one argues that human sacrifice, per se, is unacceptable to God, then one must also maintain that the sacrificial death of Jesus was unacceptable to God. Thus, the consistent evangelical theologian must maintain that human sacrifice, in and of itself, was not immoral; otherwise, as Dilling says, “he abnegates the whole Christian Gospel.” Once again the Evangelical has a tremendous problem. His doctrine of atonement is based on the religious rite of human sacrifice, which is recognized universally today as an immoral practice.

IT IS INCOHERENT

Not only is the doctrine of penal substitution illogical and immoral, it is also incoherent within classical Christian theology. It contradicts elements of the historical and orthodox doctrines of the Trinity and the Person of Christ. A key component of the PST is that the Son bore the wrath of God on the cross. According to recent defenders of the PST:

The doctrine of penal substitution states that God gave himself in the person of his Son to suffer instead of us the death, punishment, and curse due to fallen humanity as the penalty of sin. This understanding of the cross of Christ stands at the very heart of the Gospel.…That the Lord Jesus Christ died for us—a shameful death, bearing our curse, enduring our pain, suffering the wrath of his own Father in our place-has been the wellspring of the hope of countless Christians throughout the ages.
²⁰

The key elements in the PST are: (1) Man has sinned against God; (2) God is holy and cannot excuse sin(ners); (3) God's holiness results in his anger and wrath focused against sin(ners); (4) Jesus Christ, the Son of God, bore the full wrath of God against sin(ners) on the cross and completely propitiated God; (5) This propitiation enables God to righteously forgive sinners, declare them righteous, and thereby reconcile them to himself.
²¹

Advocates of the PST believe that this teaching is clearly seen in Romans 3:21–26:

But now apart from the Law [the] righteousness of God has been manifested, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, even [the] righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe; for there is no distinction; for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus; whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith. [This was] to demonstrate His righteousness, because in the forbearance of God He passed over the sins previously committed; for the demonstration, [I say,] of His righteousness at the present time, so that He would be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

Evangelicals argue that Paul here is explaining how God can remain just (i.e., righteous) and yet still be able to justify (i.e., declare righteous) sinners. He is able to do this because of the propitiation made by his Son on the cross. A key word here is, obviously,
propitiation.
The Greek word
(hilast
rion)
can mean either to “placate or appease” or “to expiate.”
²²
In classical Greek, the word is used to refer to sacrifices that appeased the gods. So the PST holds that through the death of Christ on the cross, God's wrath against sin(ners) has been “propitiated,”—placated, satisfied, and turned away (they don't like to use the word
appease
because of its pagan connotations). This is because Christ bore in his own body the punishment that was due to sin(ners).
²³
Now that God's holy wrath had been quenched, He can reconcile sinners to himself and declare them righteous.

There are many inconsistencies between this view of the atonement and historic Christian orthodoxy. First, according to the doctrine of the Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are all equally God and share precisely the same attributes. If this is the case, why is it that the Bible presents only the Father as needing to be propitiated? The New Testament speaks of the Father sending the Son to die (John 3:16; Rom. 8:32; Gal. 4:4; etc.) and of the Father being the one whose wrath is turned away (Rom. 3:25; 1 John 1:1–2; etc.). It never speaks of the Son or the Spirit being propitiated. If sin cannot be justly forgiven until God is propitiated, due to the holy nature of God, then how is it that it is only God the Father that is propitiated? Why doesn't the holiness of the Son and the Spirit, which they are supposed to share equally with the Father, demand to be propitiated?

Second, if the Son does in fact need to be propitiated, how does he propitiate himself? It seems to be a contradiction for the same person to be both the subject and the object of that verb
propitiate.
How does one quench his own wrath by punishing himself? Even if somehow it is not a contradiction, how exactly does the Son accomplish the propitiation? The penalty for sin is death, and God cannot die (by definition). Thus when Jesus died on the cross bearing the penalty for our sin, it was not his divinity that suffered and died but rather his humanity. If it was just his humanity, then why was the incarnation necessary? Could God not have just created another perfect Adam and had him pay for the sins of the world? Most theologians would say that the death of Christ is infinitely valuable precisely because he was God. But as already pointed out, God cannot die, so it was not his deity that died.

Some theologians would here argue that while God cannot die, in some mysterious fashion, the God-man did die. The concept of the God-man (the anthropic person) is based on the classical doctrine of the hypostatic union of the two natures in the person of Jesus Christ. The hypostatic union states that there are two complete natures, human and divine, in the one person of Jesus Christ. These two natures communicate their attributes to the single person, thus making the person both divine and human at the same time. However, it also states that these natures are not confused nor mixed nor intermingled but rather retain their distinctions. The early church hotly debated these matters in the so-called Christological controversies, but the final conclusion was stated in the Chalcedonian Creed of 451 CE:

Therefore, following the holy fathers, we all with one accord teach men to acknowledge one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, at once complete in Godhead and complete in manhood, truly God and truly man, consisting also of a reasonable soul and body; of one substance with the Father as regards his Godhead, and at the same time of one substance with us as regards his manhood; like us in all respects, apart from sin; as regards his Godhead, begotten of the Father before the ages, but yet as regards his manhood begotten, for us men and for our salvation, of Mary the Virgin, the God-bearer; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, recognized in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation; the distinction of natures being in no way annulled by the union, but rather the characteristics of each nature being preserved and coming together to form one person and subsistence, not as parted or separated into two persons, but one and the same Son and Only-begotten God the Word, Lord Jesus Christ; even as the prophets from earliest times spoke of him, and our Lord Jesus Christ himself taught us, and the creed of the fathers has handed down to us.
²⁴

If the divine nature cannot die, then it cannot pay the penalty for sin. If only the human nature died, then it did not have the inherent value sufficient to pay for the sins of the whole world. To say the person who was both God and Man (the anthropic person) died would not solve the problem, because it remains true that the divine nature in the person of Christ could not and did not die, so at best only the human nature of Christ died.

Third, if one holds that the person of Christ (which was both human and divine) did in fact die a spiritual death (which is the penalty for sin: Rom. 6:23), then you have the untenable position that there was at least for a time a split in the Trinity. If the God-man Jesus Christ suffered the penalty for sin as man's substitute, then he must have suffered “spiritual death.” What is spiritual death? It is being cut off from the presence and blessing of God. Is this what happened when Jesus cried from the cross in Matthew 27:45 and Mark 15:33: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Martin Luther thought so:

We do not by all these observations say that Christ did not suffer in a different way from us, and that he was not tortured and dismayed in soul differently from us, or different from what the damned feel in their dread of, and a fleeing from, God. For Christ even in his own eyes was like unto one forsaken, cursed, a sinner, a blasphemer, and one damned, though, without sin. Because it was not a matter of play, or jest, or hypocrisy, when he said: “Thou hast forsaken me”; for then he felt himself really forsaken in all things even as a sinner is forsaken after he has sinned.
²⁵