this is a misrepresentation of Christus Victor theory of the Atonement.
No misrepresentation-
Hence there is a trajectory from unease with penal substitution to a denial
of the sovereign rule of God over the cross, and thence, we may presume, the
world. In the more frank writers, this trajectory emerges clearly. J. Denny
Weaver, for example, in arguing for a non-violent view of the atonement
which he terms “narrative Christus Victor,” sees that to succeed he must
remove the cross from the plan and purpose of God. He explains that Jesus
was not sent with the intention that he should die, that his death was not
the will of God, and that it was neither required nor desired by God:
In narrative Christus Victor, Jesus’ mission is certainly not about tricking the
devil. Neither did the Father send him for the specific purpose of dying, nor was
his mission about death. . . . And since Jesus’ mission was to make the reign
of God visible, his death was not the will of God as it would be if it is a debt
payment owed to God. In narrative Christus Victor, the death of Jesus is clearly
the responsibility of the forces of evil, and it is not needed by or aimed at God.42
Yet in terms of the metaphysics of the divine relationship with creation,
even this view is unsustainable. So long as God sustains the world in which
39 Joanne Carlson Brown and Rebecca Parker, “For God So Loved the World?,” in Christianity,
Patriarchy, and Abuse: A Feminist Critique (ed. Joannne Carlson Brown and Carole R. Bohn;
New York: Pilgrim, 1989) 1–30 (p. 2). 40 Ibid. 18. 41 Hans Boersma, Violence, Hospitality, and the Cross (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2004) 41; cf. p. 117. 42 J. Denny Weaver, The Nonviolent Atonement (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001) 132.
One Line Long
penal substitution: a response to recent criticisms 85
the Son suffers, then in a strong sense he wills the suffering of the Son. If
he does not stop history as the first blow is about to be struck, then he wills
that the Son suffers. There is something that prevents him from intervening
to rescue his beloved Son, some purpose he intends to achieve through the
suffering, and therefore a strong sense in which even such a diminished god
as Weaver’s wills the suffering. If someone else had wrested from God his
work in sustaining the world, if we lived and moved and had our being elsewhere, then perhaps we could say that God did not will the suffering of the
Son. But if purposed redemptive suffering is problematic, then on any view
where God maintains some kind of control of his creation, even in a limited
fashion at arm’s length, the feminist criticism finds its target. And that target
is not just penal substitution.
We therefore need to ask about the criticism itself. Is it valid? It is evidently not so with regard to penal substitutionary atonement. According to
penal substitution, the cross does not have the character simply of suffering,
but of necessary penal suffering for a good end. It is in this sense violent, but
not reducible to the single category of violence. The cross was violent, but
there was more to it than merely an act of violence. We can understand this
if we consider scenarios in which a father and his adult son together purpose
that the son should suffer. Imagine, for example, the father who directs teams
of Médecins Sans Frontières, sending his son into an area where he and the
son know that the son may suffer greatly. The father wills to send the son,
and the son wills to go. There is no injustice here, because the purpose is
good and both parties are willing. The same applies in the case of penal substitution. In fact, the feminist criticism really only applies when we deny
penal substitution, because it is then that we are in danger of denying the
necessity of the suffering of the Son. According to penal substitution the
necessity of punishment arises from God’s own nature and his divine government. He is bound only by who he is, by faithfulness to himself.43 On the
other hand, if we opt for some kind of voluntarist account wherein the suffering of the Son is not a necessity arising from divine justice, then we are
left with a very difficult question, in fact with the feminists’ question at its
most acute. If God can freely remit sins, we must ask, why did the Father send
the Son purposing his death, as Acts 2:23 says? The more deeply we understand the Trinity, the love of the Father for the Son, the more we will ask why
a loving Father would lay the burden of suffering on his eternally beloved
Son. Penal substitution preserves a necessity, which alone explains why this
needed to happen as part of God’s saving plan. Remove the necessity, deny
penal substitution, and then the suffering of the Son is unjustifiable. The
feminists’ criticism attains its full force, because the Father wills the suffering of the Son for no necessary reason.
Christus Victor, for example, taken by itself without penal substitution,
does not explain why Christ needed to suffer like this. Deny penal substitution
43 Contra Green and Baker: “Within a penal substitution model, God’s ability to love and relate
to humans is circumscribed by something outside of God—that is, an abstract concept of justice
instructs God as to how God must behave” (Recovering 147).
86 journal of the evangelical theological society
and Christus Victor is hamstrung. Hence it is that in Col 2:13–15 the victory
over the rulers and authorities is accomplished by forensic means, by the
cancellation of the legal bond (ceirovgrafon; Col 2:14). Victory is understood
by Paul in legal terms. Penal substitution is central because of its explanatory power with regard to the justice of the other models of the atonement.
Note that such a claim affirms rather than denies the existence of other
models, but it also affirms the centrality of penal substitutionary atonement
to them. Without penal substitution, the feminists who reject Christianity
are right that the Father has no sufficient reason to inflict suffering on the
Son. A cross without penal substitution therefore would indeed mandate the
unjustified infliction of suffering on children, because it would have no basis
in justice.
vi. conclusion
It is no exaggeration to say that proponents of penal substitution are
currently charged with advocating a biblically unfounded, systematically misleading, and pastorally lethal doctrine. If the attack is simply on a caricature
of the doctrine, all well and good. Then the way forward is simple: the critics
need to say that they do believe in penal substitution itself and just not in
warped forms of it. But if the accusation is indeed an accusation against
penal substitution itself, as it surely is, then I fear that evangelicals in the
UK Alliance and elsewhere cannot simply carry on as they are. I am mindful both of the injunctions of the Lord Jesus Christ to seek peace, and of the
ways in which he and his apostles make clear that there are issues over
which division is necessary. Does not the present debate over penal substitutionary atonement fall into this category of issues that require separation?
I find it impossible to agree with those who maintain that the debate is just
an intramural one which can be conducted within the evangelical family. It
is hard to maintain this when it has been acknowledged by all parties that
we are arguing about who God is, about the creedal doctrine of the Trinity,
about the consequences of sin, about how we are saved, and about views which
are held to encourage the abuse of women and children. So long as these
issues are the issues, and I believe that they have been rightly identified,
then I cannot see how those who disagree can remain allied together without
placing unity above truths which are undeniably central to the Christian faith.
