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Can Protestants and Catholics Agree on Penal Substitutionary Atonement? (Dialogue With Erick Ybarra)
01:19:18
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- [00:00]
A
When Paul talks about the substitutionary work of Jesus, he is in a law, court, crime, punishment, substitution world. It takes a lot of gymnastics to avoid that. A lot of closing the curtain and redoing what Paul might be thinking. Just look at the famous texts of the New Testament. 2nd Corinthians 5, 21, Galatians 3, 13, 1st Peter 2, 24, Romans 3, 24, Romans 5, Romans 8. People have like these electronics services today where they could like do these searches in the Fathers. If you just go get the ancient commentaries on those texts, you'll see penal substitution in all their commentaries. I had one orthodox guy who did a book review and within the first few seconds of the review he said, I read the page eight and I couldn't read anymore.
- [00:54]
B
That is so good. Hey everybody, welcome or welcome back to Truth Unites. I am here with my friend Eric Ybarra and we're going to discuss the Atonement and explore areas of potential common ground from a Protestant to a Catholic. And especially the idea of penal substitution, which if you've never heard that term, that's fine, we'll explain that and we'll work through all of this, making no assumptions. And linked in the video description is his new book, He Bore Our Punishment. I would recommend this great book and check it out. I think you'll find it helpful on this whole topic. A huge array of quotes from the church Fathers and working through and Thomas Aquinas related to this topic. So, Eric, thanks for taking the time.
- [01:35]
A
Hey, thank you, Gavin. I'd love. It's a pleasure to be back on with you.
- [01:39]
B
Yeah, we've done a number of discussions before. In fact, I. This is how crazy my life is. I'd even forgotten this, but we've actually talked about the Atonement before. Yeah, not in the whole video, but I think it was one piece of several different topics a few years back.
- [01:52]
A
That's right. Yeah. We talked about creationism, theistic evolution, humanism. Yeah, it was an array of things on where Catholics and Protestants agree. And I was a very rare, A rare instance of saying that on the atonement, especially penal substitution, we, we have a central headquarters where we could actually conversion meet together. But not a lot of people agree with that.
- [02:23]
B
Right, exactly. Well, I want to explore that and even maybe toward the end we can come back and I just love to hear what that is like and what. Where you see things playing out from your context as a Catholic. But maybe just to start with, you know, when we hear this idea of penal substitution, some people portray this as the heart of the gospel. Others portray it as a grotesque distortion of the gospel. So there's strong feelings about this. Some of this comes down to terminology. Let's take a little bit of time here at the beginning. And when we're thinking of the atonement, of course, we're thinking about how Christ reconciles us to God, and especially through his death on the cross. Though, not only that, we'll talk a little bit about some of his other deeds, like his resurrection, for example. But could you just give us. Because the terminology here is so important, just like a really quick snapshot of what you mean when you use the phrase penal substitution.
- [03:17]
A
Yeah, that's a good question. So at the beginning of the book, the reader will see that I found it important to, you know, get our definitions correct, because often people are coming in with a preconceived notion on what penal substitution is, and there's no, like, official source that defines it for anybody. You can pick up a variety of theological dictionaries, encyclopedias, and. And try to collect a. A general understanding of what it is. And I think the best way to define penal substitution is that we as human beings created by God are accountable to him, our Creator. And we as sinners have failed to live up to his terms of justice, his standards of justice. And as a result of the way he created the fabric of nature, when we sin, there is an order that pushes back against us in order to rectify the order of justice. And in this case, we come to the concept of crime, punishment, debt. We have sinned. We incur a debt of punishment. And that is a reality, a legal reality, so very right at the start, some of my listeners are going to want to stop right there because theological notions of, you know, punishment and debt and what does it mean to have to be guilty, these are things that today, lots of theologians are really uncomfortable going along with traditional understandings. But in this brief definition, we are guilty before God. We have a debt of punishment. Another. Another comes in our place as our mediator, Jesus Christ. And he take. He. He comes in to stand under the curse of the law. And as a result, the punishment of sin falls on him. And he, as a result of taking it, satisfies divine justice. And so as a result of that, he opens up the door for people to benefit from this clemency through justice, through a covenantal relationship. So we have us sinners, we have the judge pronouncing sentence of death. We have someone who comes and wants to satisfy divine justice on our behalf. And so that way the law is no longer going to close us in its jaws anymore. And he. He takes the handwriting of requirements and nails it to the cross and opens the door for us to be set free from that condemnation.
- [06:25]
B
So a couple things that we can maybe explore here is one, and we'll come to the back around to these in a second, is one. To what extent is penal substitution compatible with other models? Because I think both you and I want to say it is, and we can explore that. Another thing, eventually we're going to talk a little bit about where you see this in the Church Fathers, this idea. I want to give you a chance to give a little bit of a sketch overview on that. There's something else I wanted to return to. Oh, yeah, you mentioned how it's very unpopular in our context to think in terms of penalty, punishment, even guilt. And that's something we can explore and figure out why that is. But let me start with just this, something we can explore right out of the gate, and that is this is a broad sort of umbrella category. When we talk about penal substitution and there's different expressions of it, and it looks different as it is teased out in different traditions and different theologians, it seems to me that for a view to be classified as penal substitution, all that is required is that it's penal and substitutionary. I mean, because that's the name, right? So if you've got a model of the atonement in which Christ's death on the cross is penal, a penalty is being paid, and it is substitutionary, then it would fit broadly within this taxonomy of views. But I think, you know, in your book, you. You call this term conceptually multivalent. So this is the idea that, you know, this does get teased out differently. And I think the reason it's important for us to talk this through, and I'll see in a second if you agree with this, is that sometimes people latch onto the crudest and worst expressions of penal substitution, and then they stretch that like a rubber band and circumscribe it around anything that goes by that label. And I think, correct me if I'm wrong, that part of what you're wanting to do in this book is push against that and say, no, there's different ways this can be teased out, and it's not fair to take the worst expressions of it as representative of the whole. Am I on the right track here or would you. Does that track with your thinking?
- [08:33]
A
Yeah, absolutely. And it's vital to get this across because a lot of criticism that comes to comes up today is surrounding penal substitutionary. Atonement is exactly what it is. What it, what is? What is? The precise metaphysics, the theology and the, the, you know, the theological construction of what's going on between the divine persons and what it means for Jesus is the Son of God. So I, you know, I think I've mentioned this to you before. There's a, there's an author out there. His name is Thomas McNabb or McNall, I can't remember. He wrote a book.
- [09:15]
B
Josh McNall.
- [09:17]
A
Josh. There we go.
- [09:18]
B
Great book, by the way. I'll link to that one in the video description too.
- [09:21]
A
It's on the Atonement. Yes. So he wrote a book called the Mosaic on the Atonement. And in that book he, he compares penal substitution to C.S. lewis's mere Christianity. So he puts mere penal substitution in order to convey the idea that in his historical research he has seen a hotel with a hallway with different rooms all devoted, and underneath this framework of psa, but one room might have furniture configuration that's different than another room. And so even within psa, there's variety. And that, that might come as a shock. It might even be. I, I've actually come across people who, I will say this to them, and they will be upset at that fact because they want it to be this irreducibly fixed construction, one room for it all. But the simple fact of the matter is, is that the specialists in the field, you know, Josh McNall, he, he did his dissertation on the Atonement in Karl Barth. He's written several articles, entries, a couple of books. TNT Clark, 1, he wrote a piece for Cambridge University, all on the Atonement. So this guy's done his homework and he himself is an evangelical, Reformed, Evangelical under that heading. So here's a guy within the Protestant tradition who's made it his specialty to search the history of the doctrine. And he has, he has given us the, the data that this is not all collapsible to one simple and indistinguishable model. And that's, you know, that's, that's vital because what, it's kind of like predestination or primacy or, you know, different notions, different major structures of theology, that, that when you start to research them, you are forced, it's not a matter of whether you like it or not or whether you think you can or not. You are forced to see differentiation. So predestination for your Protestant listeners will, you guys will know that right off the bat, us Thomists will Know, from the, you know, the, the, the Dominicans going into, you know, debate with the, excuse me. Going into debate with some of the, the alternative views of predestination, free will,
- [12:17]
B
depends on which Protestants. Because I definitely get some comments where it's like, man, I thought I liked Gavin and then I found out he was a Calvinist and now I'm dead in the, I don't know if I can still watch this channel anymore.
- [12:27]
A
Yeah, even within Calvinism you have like asymmetrical, you know, asymmetrical, unconditional election, symmetrical, double, predestined. So there's, in other words, there's different rooms. Right. And so just like with those, you know, those issues, privacy for us Catholics and orthodox PSA does force us to say, well, what, what is your particular construction of psa?
- [12:56]
B
Right. Well, let's keep that in mind that, that mere Christianity or mere PSA paradigm. Let's, with different rooms. Let's keep that in mind as we go because I think that might help some people now. Some people might say, well, yeah, but there's these expressions of PSA that have these problems with them, so why keep the label at all? And I think, I suspect both you and I will want to say, because there's something really valuable with thinking in categories of penalty and also substitution. And actually we are, I would say, required by the data of Revelation. And we'll Talk about Isaiah 53 in a second to think in these terms. But if I could offer three clarifications from my standpoint for things I sometimes see in Protestant circles that I want to say, these are not good expressions of psa. If someone is going down this pathway, this is where we want to steer them away from. One would be a divine temper tantrum. God the Father has an emotional outburst of wrath. We want to steer away from anything like that. And we want to affirm that God is impassible. He's not subject to passions as creatures are. Second, the divided Trinity idea that the Father and the Son are somehow at cross purposes with one another. We want to say, no, the Father, the Son and the Spirit are working together in the act of atonement. And then the third thing, and this is the trickiest one, is thinking of punishment or penalty as a kind of crude legalistic bookkeeping in exact quantitative mathematical terms.
- [14:30]
A
Right.
- [14:31]
B
So I think there's ways we want to tease out what do we mean by punishment here? And with Isaiah 53, verse 5, the word chastisement is going to come up. So I'm wanting to help. I Guess I'm dumping some categories onto the table right out of the front end here to put some flesh on this idea that there's different ways that this doctrine can be teased out. Anything else you want to ward off and say, you know, this is not necessarily what psa, what penal substitution means.
- [15:01]
A
Yeah. So that. That's what I consistently see. And I choose my word carefully there, because if it was just every now and then, I certainly wouldn't use that word. So in my discussions with Catholics, Eastern Orthodox and even some evangelicals, some others, you know, from different traditions is they have this idea that it's like God's like a moral monster. You know, he's. He's heated up from, you know, all this. Yeah, he's. He's like. He's all. He's got this quantitative anger in emotional wrath all balled up in himself, and he's gotta vent it out and get cooled off on Jesus. And after that, he can then give himself an excuse to start forgiving sinners. This is like, you know, this. This is nowhere in the field of Protestant, historic, classical Protestant theology. So for people to criticize PSA as a way to link Protestantism into some heretic heresy, this is disingenuous. It's a caricature. If and when somebody does get to that point where they say that. I've never actually heard anybody say that, then I might say, okay, I've met somebody who believes that. I've never met anybody. But what I can say is we need to make a distinction between qualified theology and then what people do in their. I don't want to use the word emotional, but maybe sensational presentations of the gospel where, you know, if. If you've been. If you've been at the podium or the ambo or at the pulpit, and you could just sense, like, you know, you're. You're. You're getting the crowd, you know, deep in love with God and deep in love with the cross. And there's this beauty, like you said, there is a beauty to how low Jesus went. And so sometimes I hear presentations, not just from Protestants, but historically, even from Catholics, where it goes. People go beyond what they really mean and what they say. And. And so they can give off this idea. Like R.C. sproul, for example, says that, you know, that there was this huge. He was this mass of iniquity that God couldn't stand to look at. He was damned by God. And. But then I. I heard an interview that somebody did with him where he was able to, like, answer a very Critical question. And somebody just asked Dr. Sproul, do you believe Jesus went to hell on the cross? And he goes, no, no, no, no. What atones for our sin is the infinite merits and the infinitude of his person. That's what atones for our sin. But it's like, I wonder how many people have listened to that qualified answer versus how many have listened to his famous, you know, sermon on the curse motif.
- [18:29]
B
Well, I put out a video Critically interacting with Dr. Sproul on this a little while back called did the Father Hate the Son on the Cross? So maybe I need to go back and leave a pinned comment to link to the interview, because I don't want to give only the one side of his thought if he had a fuller understanding there. But I think you're right. I think this is. We want to ward off against these bad ideas. But then someone says, okay, but then why are you insisting on penal substitution? One of the things I'd want to say, and I want to get your thoughts on this then, too, is because this is really important. We're talking about when you gave your definition at the beginning, I really liked how you talked about built into the fabric of reality. So we are creatures. God made us. That implies many things, but one of them is we relate to God as a judge. So that's not the only capacity that we relate to God in, but that's one of them. And so we're morally accountable, and we'll stand before him on Judgment Day and give an account of our lives. And that particular aspect of our createdness and our fallenness needs a solution. And it is a theologically accurate statement to say sin should be punished. We don't need to think of punishment as vindictive and hateful. Any judge who sentences a criminal to prison is punishing them. Punishment can be just. Punishment can be good. And CS Lewis has a lot of great thoughts on helping us understand why when we move away from punishment purely in terms of, like, remedial ways of dealing with evil, that's actually worse for society and for the people in question. So I think what we want to say is that we do stand before God in a situation of guilt. We do stand before God in a situation of having committed sins that deserve punishment. And we do have this problem of divine wrath. Divine wrath is mentioned all over the Bible. And I think we want to insist this is a really important aspect of our salvation, that the cross of Jesus solves these various problems, not in the ways we've identified of a divided trinity or Anything like that. Nonetheless, Jesus willingly going under the sin bearing consequences as he did on the cross, and this is important for the atonement, even while we're going to say it's harmonious with other models as well. Penal substitution isn't the only thing to say about the cross. There's more we can say other than just that. But. So I'm starting to tease out a few thoughts here about why it's important to say yes to penal substitution in the proper sense. What would you say to develop that a little bit if someone said, you know, why is this an important category in the first place?
- [21:21]
A
Well, it's, there's a number one. It's, it's expressed in Scripture in those terms. So even, even if we want to, you know, get behind the letter of Scripture and color it in with our, you know, you know, de anthropomorph forcism, you know, or demythologism, whatever you want to call it, even if you want to get behind the text and give some. Oh well, here's what's really going on. We have, we have to admit that the expression that is used, Isaiah 53, some of the Messianic Psalms, you know, Psalm 68 is a Psalm that a lot of people don't realize that the fathers used to get across to get across this notion of penal substitution. And then there is the, the, the New Testament motifs, you know, the ransom Paul, you know, he says explicitly that Christ became sin for us. And I know a lot of theologians out there, right, you know, they, they immediately put their pen to paper to, you know, to try to, to Hebraicize this out of substitution with, with their notions of animal sacrifices and stuff like this. But in the church fathers, they're pretty consistent that 2nd Corinthians 5:21 is an act whereby Christ is coming to be our substitute by taking and bearing our sins, the just for the unjust. First Peter.
- [23:08]
B
So for someone who may not know that verse, could you just. Or I can pull it up if you want, but. Well, I'll just say, for he made him who knew no sin to be sin is, I think what you're referencing there. I just wanted to flesh that out in case someone's not familiar with that verse.
- [23:24]
A
Yeah, it's the great exchange. You know, he takes our sin, we get his righteousness. And this is pretty, I mean the trajectory of this is instantaneous with early Christian literature and beyond. So it's, it's expressed in those terms, in penal substitutionary terms. Romans, chapter three, Jesus is Oh boy, I forget the Greek word. It's like he's placarded up publicly, you know, to demonstrate the justice of God. Why? Because he overlooked and forgave sins in the past. But at this moment, to make it clear that there's an expiation that is required, we're going into crime, punishment, context. There is the curse in Galatians 3 that Christ became. He became a curse for us. As it is written, if you go to the Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy, the, the text that Paul has in mind is, this is a criminal who has to be hung, you know, and, and die of miserable death. So this is the expression, let's not even touch the doorknob to meaning yet. But this is the expression of Scripture. And so one has to salute that. So PSA for that matter has the, the, the grounding of what's expressed by the divine voice. But then the meaning of these texts in Scripture, the argumentation that people use, like the biblical authors use most often, we have to admit St. Paul, it's abundantly clear that his expression is, is, is meaning. It's, it's matching up with his conceptual meaning. In other words, when, you know, if you make an expression and then somebody says, can you explain that? And you say, well, it's like this, this and this. Well, that's. You give, that's you exposing what you mean, right? So when Paul talks about the substitutionary work of Jesus, he is in a law, court, crime, punishment, substitution world. And, and this is, it takes a lot of gymnastics to avoid that. A lot of closing the curtain and redoing what Paul might be thinking to get to avoid that. So PSA has the expression of Scripture. It has the logical argumentation of Paul. And so for, for those two reasons, I think penal substitution is an apt term to, to protect, because to change it. I don't know what you would do to make it alternative. Like I, I've told people, I've had so many people get upset about this with me. I've said, well, what. All right, fine, fine. VPs, vicarious penal satisfaction. I've tried this, you know, but we're still, still got the word penal in there. So, but, but it, it made some people happy. Which goes to show that, you know, like statistics show us the medium is the message. Some people, just by changing the medium, the very same message will be accepted. So vp, vps maybe is an alternative. I don't see why we need to do that, but I think it's well worth keeping the original PSA Yeah, you
- [27:30]
B
mentioned in your set of comments there before getting to some of these New Testament passages in Paul, Isaiah 53. I just pulled it up on my phone here. Verse 4. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. Yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted. Verse 5. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities. Upon him was the chastisement that. That brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. In your book, you have a discussion of that word, the Hebrew word chastisement there, which is something I've looked into a little bit as well. It's hard to deny the substitutionary language in a text like this, him for us. And it's also hard to deny the penal language that is there. And that's true for some other passages as well. So I think if someone is. Is pushing against what they've seen, maybe a crude articulation of psa, and they go so far in the other direction as to deny that there's any notion of penal substitution, a question that arises that maybe we could reflect upon is why does that happen so much? What makes this unpopular? And I have one theory, and that is that in the modern west it is more unpopular than it was in previous times, in pre modern times, to think in terms of divine wrath and punishment of sin. We tend to think that divine punishment of sin is an embarrassing doctrine that needs to be explained in certain circles, at least of the modern West. Of course, not everywhere. Some people have this. I think there's this feeling of we just want a therapeutic salvation. We just want a God who's just going to heal us, you know, and we don't like this sort of legal side of things. And of course, what I always say to people when I'm pastoring people through this is if you can embrace the offense of the gospel and humble yourself under. Under its claims that may be counterintuitive to you based upon your social location, then you are well positioned to receive the comfort of the gospel and a happy thought to think, thank God Christ paid my penalty. I mean, thank God for that. You know, where would I be without that? So I guess I'm just saying our historical location in the modern west is a factor here for maybe why this is unpopular, for why the what seems somewhat straightforward in certain biblical texts is, like you said, you know, doing maneuvers to get around it. That does happen at times. I'm not trying to be unfair to the thoughtful criticisms of PSA but you do see that at times. What, what. What is. What do you think about this? Do you have. Do you have reflections on why it's sort of trendy, especially in some academic circles, to push against penal substitution?
- [30:27]
A
Yeah, that my thoughts converge. I, I think a lot of people don't realize that penal substitution came under the, The. The harshest criticism within Protestant intellectuals, the intelligentsia of liberal Protestantism is really where you generated a scholarly criticism of these things. One of my favorite authors, Anglican theologian, he passed away a while ago. Leon Morris, he Australian. He. He wrote a few books on the atonement, but he already was facing the backlash from his theological colleagues. You know, one of them was C.H. dodd on a particular term, you know, the helas moss or the helas word group, from which you get, like the Greek rendering of the mercy seat he lost. Darion. Whether to translate that as propitiation or expiation, scholars debate on that. But you can see from Leon Morris's book, the Apostolic Preaching of the Cross, that he took the time to write that because he saw something beautiful and essential to the gospel was being. It was being eclipsed by the intellectual propriety of the day. You know, this doesn't sound. This is. This is degrading to Christianity. This is putting us more in alignment with the old pagans who had this, you know, a God of low intelligence, you know, that they. They had to feed him blood, feed the. This God with blood, feed this God with smells and. And to get them to, you know, grant them blessings for ocean travel or whatever it is. And I love the book by Leon Morrison, and I recommend your listeners, if they want to do a. A study on the terms, you know, the original language, Greek and Hebrew, on, you know, justification, propitiation, redemption, all those things. Read Leon Morris, and in particular, the. The people he combats. So when he. When he. When he makes a quotation for what people are saying to oppose it, this is where. Within Protestantism itself, let alone Catholicism today. It's amazing. Even, like within the Thomistic circles of Catholicism, they can't take some of these penal ideas. But within Protestantism is really where you had a lot of massive output against penal substitution. And I think it's precisely because of what you said. They were looking to clean things up, clean the revival as preachers and clean up all, you know, the old stuff and sort of make, you know, civilized Christianity.
- [34:10]
B
That's so interesting to think about this as you're talking about it and remember that. And this is good for our viewers to realize that theology, like Other areas of life has trends and fads. So you know, it. Like when you're back in junior high, you're back in seventh grade. There's cool kids, there's. There's popular people, there's unpopular people, there's medium popular. There's. There's certain styles of clothing that are cool and trendy and become fads. When I was in seventh grade, everyone had a started doing yo yos. And that was cool to have yo yo. You know, things get. Human beings are very trendy. And for our viewers to understand, the same thing happens in theology, especially academic theology. It just happens in more sophisticated expressions. And I would simply observe that it looks like penal substitution can be uncool in certain circles. And yet, of course, you know, I'm preaching a sermon on this Sunday at a different church in East Tennessee on Romans 1:16. I am not ashamed of the gospel. It's got my mind really thinking about, you know, why would Paul say, the only way you can say that is if you could be tempted to be ashamed of the gospel. And there are things about the gospel that, you know, at moments in life, we're going to feel like we're more sophisticated than saying this or something like that. And just to, you know, to not be embarrassed to talk about the blood of Jesus and what it does as the saving and the saving power it has is a wonderful thing. But one thing I'd love for us to emphasize, too, is penal substitution is not the only thing that needs to be said about the atonement. It is compatible with other motifs that are also true, that are also biblical. And so there's so many, I think when I was doing a PhD seminar on the atonement, I counted up like 15 different atonement and tried to triangulate them all. And my academic work on this topic has been to triangulate Irenaeus, Athanasius, and Anselm and try to show how much overlap they have. In particular, the idea of recapitulation and then the idea of satisfaction. So in his atoning work, I want to say Christ both reconstitutes human nature and makes satisfaction for sin. And I'm arguing you got passages saying both of those things in all three of those. Theologians and Anselm talks about recapitulation, and Athanasius has passages where he talks about, you know, the debt of sin that Christ pays and this kind of thing. So do you want to say anything about this and does that track with your thoughts, that there's compatibility between multiple motifs when we Think about Jesus's atoning work.
- [36:49]
A
Yes. And my research has yielded the same observation, is that today it's almost taken for granted that PSA is like a circle that excludes and repels other models like recapitulation, Christus Victor, even the Ransom theory, and the. The patristic authors, they could argue and even explain the death of Jesus with both or two or more of those models together, because for them, they're working in symphony rather than at odds. And so PSA is definitely going to be one of the gears moving together with Christus Victor. In fact, it could be that the larger machine is Christus Victor, perhaps.
- [37:54]
B
Now just define Christus Victor, because I'm always thinking about viewers who are uninitiated to these terms.
- [37:59]
A
Yeah, yeah. So Christus Victor is a phrase that was made by. There's a Lutheran scholar, Gustav Alain. There we go. I have his book in the boxes somewhere in my garage. Christus Victor is the idea that Christ overcomes the powers and the principalities that are sort of terrorizing creation, preventing man from his full, you know, from rising to God. So the enemies of God, the enemies of man, the enemies of God, so Satan, the fallen angels, and all that. They. All the. The. All of the efforts that they put in place of the world to keep men locked up in sin, in death. And Christ comes in and, you know, the vanquisher, He. He comes in and he puts all of evil out of business and rises up victoriously. And, you know, the Christ is the victor. Christ the victor. And that's a beautiful imagery, but it's in symphony with penal substitution. I would argue, and I. I would say it's probable that petals. Pete. The penal substitute function of Jesus is a smaller gear, but an essential gear than the part of the machine or the larger, you know, the larger chassis of the machine, of the atonement being Christ as the new creation, you know, the new model of humanity who's victorious, you know, from his battle against evil. That. That might be the broader presentation, you know, but penal substitution is definitely in there somewhere. Yeah.
- [39:59]
B
And because what people want to say is, oh, it's Christus Victor rather than penal substitution. And this is the danger of false dichotomy. If there is one thing I could say about atonement theology, it's to alert our viewers, excuse me, to be constantly vigilant against false dichotomies, which, when two complementary ideas are set forward as though you have to choose one versus the other. And I'd want to say from passages like Colossians 2, 14 and 15, where Christ disarms demons, basically because he's canceled the debt that stood against us. That there's a logical relationship here where the penal substitutionary character of the atonement is itself part of what causes Christ to triumph over the dark powers of this world because he robs Satan of his accusing power against us for those in Christ. And so I want to say these two things are compatible and, you know, along with other aspects of the atonement. The atonement is like a multifaceted jewel that you can look at from different angles. And there's so much to it. But, you know, an interesting. This might be kind of fun to throw onto the table here is atonement in Narnia, okay? The lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, when Aslan dies for Edmund. So a lot of people want to say. To appeal to this story as a way to say, see, this is like Christa's victor. It's not like penal substitution. Aslan died and his death was oriented to the white witch, not to, you know, some divine figure, something like that. But actually, if you read that book carefully, there's all this reference. So at one point, somebody says, you know, Aslan, why do you need to. And I'm butchering this in my memory, but my regurgitating this. But he says something like, you know, why do you. Why do you need to follow the deep magic from the dawn of time and so on and so forth. And he says something like. He reminds them of what is written on the scepter of his father, the Emperor across the sea. And he basically references several things that seem to symbolize God's law. And from that, I don't think it may not be penal substitution exactly in Narnia, but it's pretty close. And it's definitely something in that realm. I think in my book on this, I argue that atonement in Narnia is kind of like a governmental model with some satisfaction and a little bit of ransom thrown in there, too. It's definitely not just Christus Victor because Aslan dies, not just because the witch demands it or because he wants to defeat the witch. He dies because of the demands of his father, the Emperor across the sea, that he references. And as I say, what's engraved upon his scepter, so it's oriented to God. So anyway, I'm just saying both. And here with penal substitution and Christus Victor.
- [43:01]
A
Yeah, I think a lot of Christus Victor proponents, they're. We're not even driving yet, theologically speaking. They don't even want to get in the same car because they, they have to back up and say, wait a minute, we got to go back to our first things. You know, they don't even believe God punishes anybody. So to, to talk about Christ taking on man's sin or man's punishment, that to them that's like, you know, it's like another planet to them because for them God doesn't punish anybody to begin with. You know, every, every bit of suffering and pain and loss is self inflicted. It's, you know, the devil, this oppression from the evil one. God is always our fan. He's always not wanting us to experience these things. So if you have that view, you're definitely not going to appreciate psa, let alone agree with it. But Christus Victor sounds workable because of your worldview. God is always safe, always trying to help. So Christus Victor's is, is more of like, it's easier to deal with. So it's, it's. In other words, what I'm trying to say here, Gavin, is that it's not just people who are trying to make false dichotomies. It's also a natural repellent because of their, their, their primal theology of God and this whole idea of crime punishment being absent from his design. So, so that's why you see a lot of people accepting Christus Victor, but not penal substitution. I've even heard of some people saying that they left years of depression. And this is what I hear more from Catholics and Orthodox. They'll say, oh, when I converted out of Protestantism, I went through years of therapy over pedal substitution because they, they thought of God as sort of like coming after them every day, you know, and if he's going to kill his son, boy, he's going to kill me much slower. And so I, I've heard even professional theologians who would say that mental health issues have, have. So the, there's also that emotional takeo, that emotional reactionism which causes Christus Victor to be the preference.
- [45:57]
B
Yeah, yeah, that's interesting. And maybe I had another question I wanted to come to about the Church fathers, but let's just delay that in the queue one question and come so that. Yeah, but let's, let's address this pastoral issue you just raised because I bet there's a lot of people out there who can relate to this on some level. There's this kind of deep instinctive dread and fear of God. And you know, what we're bringing up here is the importance of having an accurate doctrine of God, having A big God, a God who is holy, who is transcendent, who does intervene. I mean, you can't read the Bible and not come to terms with a God who intervenes in judgment and before whom we should fear. However, I think what I'd want to, I'm curious what you would say to someone who is in that. You know, they're, they're, they feel like they need therapy because they're so afraid of God. You know, as a pastor, I've kind of learned to slow down and really listen to people's stories because sometimes people come from backgrounds where they may have been through experiences that, that are a factor. And so you want to try to help people. So, you know, what I, what I would want to say to somebody is, number one, read my brother Dane's book Gentle and Lowly and it'll teach you about the gentleness of Christ and his mercy to the penitent. But even shortening, if you don't have time to read a whole book on that, just to encourage people, penal substitution is not contrary to the tenderness of the love of God. And the way I like to encourage people is to say when you see real evil in the world, you want a God who has wrath. It'd be hard to worship a God who never judges evil, but that is for hard hearted and impenitent evil in particular. And for those who run to Christ for refuge and have a humble heart before God and are penitent of their sins and are sorry and are the kinds of people who might be trembling and worried. I think we also want to emphasize to them the love of God and the mercy of God and the tenderness of God. And because I want them to understand, yes, we relate to God as judge and that's the legal dimension. But in Christ we also relate to God as Father. And that is another dimension of our salvation as Christians. I don't know. Those are some of the directions I'd be going in to start to encourage someone if they're struggling in this area. What would you say?
- [48:27]
A
Yeah, so it's, it's so you know, my book is, the subtitle is Penal Substitution in the Church Fathers and Beyond. So you know, the sources for me that are fresh are the patristic commentaries. So the listener needs to be aware. I am no expert in how to pastorally deal with some of these difficulties that people have, but from what little I've gleaned, we could back up and say that it is true. God does not take pleasure in the death of any person, any he does not take pleasure in, you know, here we go again though, because it's just some of the. We. We've got so much post traumatic stress disorder, Gavin, because sometimes we'll say something. And I could just think of the kind of Calvinist or the kind of Thomist who's going to say, oh, well, wait a minute, God does take pleasure in this sense. And what I mean is the scripture expresses that there is a sadness that we need to absorb in the way that we understand things. When God sees people falling under the punishments or the wrath that the Scripture describes, that belongs to God. But we can just make some distinctions where it's not God's wrath, like directly, like he has a problem with us and he has a particular desire to see us in pain that seems to go contrary to the whole plan of salvation. You know, if you, you know, you read the opening pages of Scripture, you've got this beautiful Eden. This is supposed to cover the whole globe. That that whole plan does not reach its goal. But then we read at the end of the Bible where we're back in Eden, there's no more tears, which means that there had been tears. And so you, you can see that the plan of God is to relieve us, to bring us back to safety. You know, so where does all this wrath come from? Because any Hebrew reads the Old Testament that God's holy and hot wrath is, is given vivid terms and expression. And especially in the major prophets, some of the minor prophets, we were not to read those literally. But as I talk about in the book, St. Augustine and John Cassian and other patristic commentators said, we're supposed to understand that in terms of God's, his holy justice. Okay? And that's something that if we want to take that away from God, we're going to take too much away. Because if we take that away, then we're in a worse condition. Like you already referenced how the world would be worse if there was no place for that God. God's wisdom knows what needs to be in place for all the operations to work as they're supposed to. One of those is the order of justice. And so if we betray that order, then just quite naturally. So there's. This is where it comes to this issue is, is, is death or the punishment of sin natural, or is it something that is volitional from God? Aquinas says it's both. But it's natural in the sense that, you know, when we sin, God can't, God literally cannot coexist with the reprobate it's not possible even if he wanted to, because his eyes are too holy to behold evil. You know, so this is something that Protestants, Catholics and Orthodox can all agree on is God cannot make heaven to welcome unlimited iniquity. Right. So even by his own nature, there has to be this division.
- [52:49]
B
Right? Yeah, it's like a. There's A great old C.S. lewis quote of like, something to the effect of God can no more endure unholiness. Then Niagara Falls can stop a mosquito from getting squashed if it flies into the Niagara Falls. It's like, you know, so. And you mentioned a moment ago the wrath of God. You know, if someone doesn't believe in the wrath of God, even in the New Testament, read the Book of Revelation and Jesus and his wrath against evil and enemies. But I just want to pastor someone to say, the Lord is good and merciful and gracious to all, and if you come to him with a humble heart, I mean, it's just amazing to see the character of Christ in the Gospels. His heart inclines to the humble, and so they don't need to fear that. I almost want to say it as strong as to say, any mercy you've ever received from a human being is just a little glimmer of what you can get from your Father in heaven. And so don't be afraid of this wrathful God who's going to suddenly pull out a club and smack you. There is divine wrath, but for those in Christ, you have nothing to fear in that direction. But that's precisely why we need to have good atonement theology. So we know why that is true, because we know we're close. Christ has solved that problem on the cross. I really want to ask you this, Church Fathers. So much of your book is about just canvassing through the Church Fathers. I think it'd be too much to go into the weeds and start working serially through different Church Fathers. But for the sake of our discussion here, could you give us just like a snapshot overview of your summary about where do you see penal substitution in the Church Fathers? What's your overarching conclusion?
- [54:44]
A
Yeah, it's a good question. So because PSA is, you know, rooted in this world view of, you know, we are. We are volitional beings made of the image of God. We're accountable. God is a judge. I had to conduct research on what the Fathers say about that, about how God created the world and how there is. There are standards and we are responsible and that we will have to pay for any of our wrongdoings. So I went through the Fathers and you know, interestingly enough, you know, from the Eastern side of things today in contemporary theology, where you've get. You get this focus on medication and healing. Some of the Eastern Fathers were the most clear on how God is standing over and against sinners. So I had to go through the Cappadocians, Gregory the Theologian, Gregory of Nazianzus, Basil the Great One in particular, Origin of Alexandria. He's controversial figure. I know we don't have time to really go through all that, but even Origen, who seems to be a springboard for a lot of contemporary therapeutic theologies, even he is pretty. It's replete in his writings on the necessity of a blood victim to propitiate the wrath of God. Of course, you could find something. I, I mean, anybody who's read Origin, you can almost find anything in there. But there's some places you'll see where he sounds like this, all about medicine, all about getting better. God just, you know, wants to heal everything and bring everything back. But then there's other places where it's like, wow, he goes into this and like, the reader's like, I don't know what to do with Origin. So he's an early writer, though. And so he wrote commentaries on Romans. He wrote commentaries explicating this, this theme of God as judge, human beings as sinner, and Christ as the mediator and the advocate. So I had to. Had to make sure that the Fathers are working with that worldview. Then how do they describe the cross of Jesus? Yes, they talk about the Ransom theory. The Ransom theory is quite popular, actually. I didn't think it was as popular before, but it's in Augustine, you see it.
- [57:44]
B
Did you define that one too?
- [57:46]
A
Yeah, that. Yeah. This one's a little tricky because no pun intended, because there's this part of there where God, you know, Christ, God the Father, tricks Satan into killing Jesus and it's sort of like a mousetrap or a fish hook are some of the, the images that the Fathers use where it's Satan, you know, he's trying to use his power to overcome man and he's killing human beings left and right. But then he comes with the same weapon against the innocent, one who doesn't deserve death. And so it ends up imploding his whole enterprise because he sticks his knife into the author of life and it ends up just exploding eternal life and undoing death. So this is. So it's sort of like, you know, Christ was sort of like this ransom to trick the devil. Into losing his whole power over the human race. It's. It. If. If literally understood. It's not really orthodox, but I don't think that some of the patristic authors who employ it intended to be literally taken. I think Augustine, for example, uses it, but I don't. He's very quick to say, well, but we have to. We have to remember that the death is the sentence of God's retributive justice. So Augustine is very clear in De Trinitate, where it's like, it's not that Satan's going around and he's the one that's got the jurisdiction of death over everybody that comes from the retributive justice of God. Satan just comes along and he finds it useful, you know, But. So that's the Ransom theory.
- [59:58]
B
Okay, so you've got the Ransom theory in the Fathers to some extent, maybe compatible with other models as well.
- [60:05]
A
What else?
- [60:05]
B
So you're. So we're. What I'm trying to ask is to kind of summarize your perception of penal substitution in the Fathers.
- [60:12]
A
They're seeing the penalty as death. Okay. And, you know, for some readers, listeners, that's unhelpful, right? Because death is complex, you know. Well, there's. There's bodily death, there's the death of the soul, then there's the death of the body. Then the scripture talks about first and second death. There's temporal and then there's everlasting. So which one are we talking about? So when it comes to Jesus, the Fathers are speaking about the sentence of Genesis chapter three, which is the. The human body being, you know, the holy. The eternal life that the body was supposed to have is evacuated, and the soul and the body are going to sever and the body's going to return to the ground. So the Fathers are referring to physical death when they think of Christ's.
- [61:15]
B
The.
- [61:15]
A
The punishment that he takes not just on the cross, though, it's also in the severance of the soul and the body in Jesus. So Jesus descends into Hades.
- [61:31]
B
Okay.
- [61:33]
A
And this is a commentary that Aquinas brings out as well. So it's temporal. It's definitely not the everlasting death of the reprobate. Right.
- [61:49]
B
Okay. So. But I mean, now would you say. Because I've noticed the same thing with Athanasius where he's got penal categories, but a lot of times it's death, which, you know, this is another area where I don't understand why people deny any notion of penal substitution because death itself is a penal reality in the Bible, It's a penalty as a consequence of first sin according to Genesis. But would you say that, is it a fair statement that the motif of penal substitution, among other motifs as well, is common throughout the patristic era?
- [62:28]
A
I. I think it's there quite a bit. It's not even something that you have to go hunting for. It's in. Just look at the famous texts of the New Testament. 2nd Corinthians 5, 21, Galatians 3, 13, 1st Peter 2, 24, Romans 3, 24, Romans 5, Romans 8. If you just go. People have like these electronic services today where they could, like, do these searches in the Fathers. If you just go get the ancient commentaries on Scripture on those texts, you'll see penal substitution in all their commentaries.
- [63:18]
B
Yeah, that's a great point. It's amazing how much you can find in the Fathers where you just look at their biblical. You look at their. Or sermons like Chris sermons from Chrysostom on some of these texts. It's kind of amazing. You know, one way the Fathers have helped me, and I'm curious how this strikes you, is to see the significance of Christ's entire incarnate work. So this is maybe an area where those who affirm penal substitution, we can get tunnel vision. And I've known people who want to defend penal substitution so much that we get so focused and we lose a bit of the narrative context. And I love this thought that Jesus entire incarnate existence matters. His birth, his sinless life, his death. But you mentioned a moment ago his burial. I have a video on the descent into the dead, and it's amazing how common that is to our church history. I try to argue for that. His resurrection, his ascension to heaven, and then his second coming. Do you think it's because it's interesting to think about it? Well, how would the work of atonement be different if it didn't happen like this? Like, for example, you know, what if Jesus had just died and then instantaneously been resurrected from the dead and the cross shatters into a thousand pieces and there's the risen Christ right there, and everybody sees him, and there's no intervening span of time from Friday afternoon to Sunday morning. But I think it's significant that Jesus was buried and it matters. And it's an expression of his, I would say, his solidarity with us. And then also, you know, we talk about his descent to the dead. But do you want to say anything about this? I mean, do you see this as well in the Fathers as I do, that Christ's atoning work comes in the context of his entire incarnate existence. And it's not just his death on the cross per se that we need to think about, though. That's the climactic element. But, you know, even if you wanted to say, no, no, no, the only thing Jesus does to save us is die on the cross. And everything else is just window dressing. You know, it's like, okay, well, when do you mark the cutoff there? When does he actually start saving us? Is it the moment he's carrying the cross? Is it in the Garden of Gethsemane? You know, there's this broader narrative to it.
- [65:42]
A
No, yeah, it is definitely broader. The church fathers, especially Cyril of Alexandria, but he's getting this from the Cappadocians, and the Cappadocians are really getting it from Scripture. Every course, every piece of Christ's life is his filling human nature with the. The empowerment that it needs to do the reverse of the. The way of death. So, I mean, obviously that's from his incarnation, but if somebody wanted to start from the baptism of John, he goes right into the wilderness and he relives the. The challenge of humanity, saying no to the pleasures, to the body. That's Christ filling his nature with this vital power to overcome desires. You know, I'm not saying he had temptation, but what I'm saying is, is he put into his own nature this power to overcome the need to have these things that please the body to the point where he didn't have food or water. Right? Then after this, his, you know, he tells the apostles, I have food to eat. Of which, you know, not. You know, he lives his life doing the will of the Father rather than the will of man or the. Or, or the work of man. And in. Throughout his whole life, all the way to him accepting God's will for him. You know, the Garden of Gethsemane, where he's got this process where he has to give himself up. He's got to throw himself into the arms of evil. What he's doing there is. He's fixing human nature. He's regulating it back to be a living sacrifice all the way from beginning to end.
- [67:55]
B
I love it. Your words. He's fixing human nature. That is pushing my mind in the direction of some recapitulation models. And I think this is an important aspect of the atoning work of Jesus too. You think of even just the language from Paul of the first Adam and the last Adam. This is important for us to understand. It's like humanity 2.0. Something changes with Jesus. And by the way, if people are interested in my writing on this, in Theological Retrieval for Evangelicals, I have a chapter on the Atonement, and I talk about the transfiguration and Christ's life and all these things that we're getting into here. But this is a world that we could get lost in. And I'm mainly just wanting to direct people to your book. And I think it's awesome to come together, Catholic to Protestant, to defend penal substitution. I think that's something I'm grateful. We can kind of come together around and say, hey, cool, whenever we have common ground. How do other Catholics respond to your defense of penal substitution? What, what is the react. What do you see in, in response?
- [69:02]
A
Well, I, I see a mixture that I find that a lot of Catholics who themselves have been immersed in Scripture and patristic literature, they're very warm to how we can express PSA the right way, as opposed to perhaps what they're thinking. You know, they might be thinking of Jonathan Edwards's sermon, sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, but so I get a lot of warm reception from theologically trained Catholics with patristic background. Catholics who are more, they're not, they don't really read the Church Fathers. They're, they're, they're more on like, you know, post Trident theology, more contemporary. John, John Paul ii. You know, they're, they're more into like, neo Thomism. They are really repulsed by this, and it's because they see it as heretical. They see it as a, an offense against the truth. And so I, I've been dealing with those Catholics and trying to work with them. And the, the best way I know to, to get their attention is to show the historicity of psa. So that's why I wrote this book. So among Catholics, it's a mixture. The ones who really like it, really, really like it. So they're not just warm, they're not repulsed, but they really like it. Are a lot of the traditional Catholics, you know, the ones that are tradies, they, they seem to be all right with. I don't know. That's just what I've seen.
- [71:15]
B
Yeah. As you were finishing your answer there, I was just pulling up to your table of contents here, and I think I've counted around 35 different church fathers that you canvass in this book. And so if people want to dive in and it goes a little bit into the medieval era, but if people want to dive into this book, I think they'll find, you know, Lots of food for thought in this, so appreciate you writing it. It's fun to talk this through. Maybe we can finish with thinking about. So that kind of. Me asking you about that kind of brings up this broader issue of just the online dynamics right now. We've known each other for a while. We've always had a good relationship. How do you see the state of discourse right now among different Christians of different traditions on the Internet? Am I off base in feeling like we've got some major challenges in terms of just the way the algorithms seem to escalate? And granted, I made the mistake of logging into X today, so that's probably where it's fresh in my mind. But it's like they're pushing us toward more heat and less light is how it feels a lot of times now. There's wonderful exceptions to that. But boy, there's a scene in The Great Divorce, C.S. lewis's book where he describes. It's comedically describing a theology paper being read at a conference in hell. And, and the person describing the, you know, he's like, I got to get back to hell to read my paper. There's a conf. A theology conference coming up next week. And he's like. And he makes this comment how there's a certain slipperiness to the thoughts and, you know, in hell, we, we, we can't really get any clarity. And then he says, yeah, and tempers run, run out super quiet, super quickly. We're all always getting angry, losing our tempers with each other and this kind of thing. And I thought, that feels like X. That feels like a lot of social media not getting to clarity, but just everyone's losing their temper all the time. It's interesting. Do you see that? And what do we do about it?
- [73:15]
A
It's a circus. It's the animals gone wild. And I don't mean to call people animals, but what I, what I'm trying to get across is that you've got people who lack mature maturation, Christian maturation. They don't have year, you know, years of experience bridling the tongue, working on their self control, and they're invested in all these immense theological topics. So they take more of the, the animal in them that, that becomes the vehicle, the medium through which they're playing with all these beautiful jewels of God's wisdom. And in that, you're going to have all this, you know, this flesh, this, this animosity and, and name calling and, and, you know, it's, it's ugly. And it reminds me of how Paul himself probably very familiar dealing with, you know, the Jews in his day, the Gentiles in his day, where he said, look, the, the servant of the Lord has to have certain virtues. You know, he's got to be self control, he's got to be humble, he's got to be patient, he's got to be able to teach. He also has to correct in gentleness. I mean, this is the man, this is a man's man. Paul is a man's man. You go through all that he went through for Christ, okay? And he's saying, gentleness, kindness, peacefulness, patience and long suffering. Those are absolutely indispensable in theological discourse. And I see people with all these, you know, great reputations for their knowledge. I wonder if Paul would call that knowledge, you know, what kind of knowledge is it? Or like The Epistle of St. James, the wisdom from above. The knowledge from above or from below? Because the knowledge from above creates peace. It creates, it takes away strife, you know, So I think we've got a lot of disorder and priorities are out of place in the all light discourse.
- [75:48]
B
Yeah, well, even though the categories you introduced from the New Testament there, like gentleness, for example, I mean, not only are we falling short of actually executing those, but in a lot of the dialogue you'll find people who are openly sort of treating those things as if they're insufficiently masculine. Right. It's like they're almost, almost mocking what the New Testament regards as virtues, which is troubling to see on the increase. I don't know what to do about it. I think we just keep trying to model a better way whenever we can. So, yeah, I've always appreciated our dialogues. Some people will be like, well, but it was a Protestant and a Catholic talking, and you guys didn't talk about what you disagree on. But it's like, well, we don't always have to do that. I mean, we've done that and we can do that again. Now if people are watching this and they're like, oh, but Gavin and Eric, I want you guys to talk about something you disagree on. Okay? Give us in the comments a topic and I'll read through the comments. And if there's one that really stands out, then we can consider doing another dialogue on that as well. But it's also fine to just come together and just talk through something we agree on. And I appreciate your work on the Atonement. So this is, so this is good. Any final, final sign off remarks here?
- [76:58]
A
No, just. You know what? I'd like people who are interested to do is to give the book a chance, you know, because I see a lot of people already judging it without even reading it. I had one orthodox guy who did a book review, and within the first few seconds of the review, he said, I read the page eight and I couldn't read anymore. That is so good. That is.
- [77:26]
B
If that's not a. If that's not a sign of the times, a book review that gets. Wow, Page eight. Give him a medal. He made it past the first seven.
- [77:36]
A
You know, I don't go through, you know, because some of my orthodox PhD friends are going to be like, but there's a certain metaphysic in Cyril that you're missing. And when he says punishment, he doesn't. I. I'm conscious of all that. Okay. I couldn't write a book to do that. Nobody's ever written a book to go through the particulars of every church father. But it. It's a. We need to become acquaint with what the terms that the fathers are using and some of their elaborate explanations. And I just wanted people to become acquaint with them across the centuries, from east, west, north and south. And I think if you give it a chance, then, you know, if somebody thinks that. No, I really think Eric went wrong, let me know. Bring it to my attention. But at least they did the work of reading it.
- [78:33]
B
Yeah, especially if you're going to write a book review. I mean, look, I don't get mad at people if they don't finish my books. I get it. I read portions of books. But if you're going to write a book review.
- [78:44]
A
Right.
- [78:45]
B
That's a basic prerequisite. Maybe you got to read the book. That is really funny.
- [78:49]
A
It's good.
- [78:49]
B
We can laugh about it, but, yeah, it feels like a sign of the times in some ways. All right, man. Well, hey, we'll talk again sometime on a new topic. Keep up the great work, viewers. Check out the video description and check out Eric's book. I'll throw in a couple others in there. Maybe I'll throw in the Leon Morris book. Maybe I'll throw in the Josh McNall book. But I'll put Eric's first. So those of you who want to especially dive through the church fathers on this topic, I think it'll be a great starting spot to just get you oriented to the lay of the land. So, yeah, thanks for watching, everybody, and we'll see you next time.