Did God Have to Kill Someone To Save Me?

Kevin Harris: Bill, I'm constantly running into articles and having conversations that remind me of the importance of your book Atonement and the Death of Christ. It's available at ReasonableFaith.org. Do you still regard this as one of your most important works? Is the book standing the test of time?

Dr. Craig: I do regard it as one of my most important works and more relevant today than ever, as I think the podcast today will disclose. Whether it's standing the test of time is really hard for me to say. It was published in 2017. Since then, there has been a symposium on the book organized by Aaron Davis from St. Andrews in Scotland that was held at the Evangelical Philosophical Society meeting last year and has now been recently published in the society's journal Philosophia Christi.

On the other hand, I recently read a book on the atonement where the author takes a viewpoint diametrically opposite mine. Even though his book was published several years later, there was no knowledge whatsoever of my book, much less interaction or engagement with it. So, in that sense, it can still be overlooked by people, and we'll just have to see if it makes an impact over time.

Kevin Harris: Is there anything that you've added in your Systematic Philosophical Theology that you didn't include in the book on the atonement?

Dr. Craig: Yes, there is. The fourth volume of the Systematic Philosophical Theology will deal with the doctrine of Christ including the work of Christ and so atonement theory. Since publishing the book, I have come to realize that the notion of the imputation of sin or wrongdoing is far more extensive in Western systems of justice than I ever believed. I'm indebted here to law professor Mel Cochrell for furnishing many new examples of where a person's wrongdoing is imputed to another person who did not do the wrong – who did not do anything of that nature. Yet that person is held guilty and punished for a wrong that someone else did. This is providing more examples where it is regarded as just, under certain circumstances, to punish a third party for a sin that someone else committed.

Kevin Harris: We've discussed popular analogies that try to illustrate what Jesus did for us on the cross, and I thought I'd heard them all. But reading this essay^[1] from blogger Dan Foster unveiled yet another analogy that I'd like to get your thoughts on.

The article begins:

It started with a story at youth group. One I thought was about love.

I was maybe thirteen. We were crammed into the church hall . . . fidgeting, waiting for the message to start . . .

And then the preacher got up.

He was young and sharp and trying very hard to make an impact. You could tell he had practiced this story. He launched in with confidence, pacing back and forth in front of us like something urgent was on the line.

“Imagine,” he said, “you’re standing in the middle of the road. Just standing there. And you don’t realise it, but a massive bus is flying toward you at full speed. You’re seconds away from death. You don’t even see it coming. You’re about to be crushed. But then — right at the last moment — Jesus sees what’s happening. He runs in, throws himself at you, shoves you out of the way… and the bus hits him instead. He dies so you can live. That’s what the cross is. That’s what Jesus did for you.

And he continues writing:

And I remember thinking, That’s incredible.

It made sense. I’d never heard it explained like that before. It was clear and dramatic and simple enough to stick. Jesus took the hit. I deserved it, but he stepped in. That’s love, right?

That story lived in me for years. It shaped how I saw God. It shaped how I saw myself. It shaped how I saw other people. It was the lens I looked through whenever someone mentioned the cross.

Bill, before we get to why Dan eventually rejected this analogy or illustration, I'd like to get your initial thoughts on the bus analogy.

Dr. Craig: I think it is a good illustration of substitutionary death. But, of course, it leaves entirely out of account the moral dimensions of Jesus’ death—that by dying, he satisfied divine justice, thereby affording you a pardon for your sin and guilt. Therefore, the analogy is of very limited use. It’s helpful to illustrate what it means to die as a substitute, but it doesn’t really illustrate the doctrine of the atonement because it leaves entirely out of account the moral dimensions.

Kevin Harris: Dan continues writing:

But over time, something in me started to shift.

. . . The story still stirred something in me. It still sounded right. But there was a tension I couldn’t name. . . . I don’t remember exactly when the question surfaced. . . . But at some point, I found myself asking:

If Jesus saved me from the bus… then who was driving it?

. . . if that story really reflects what happened at the cross, then the logic is unavoidable.

In this analogy, the driver of the bus is none other than….

God.

Not sin. Not evil. Not the brokenness of the world.

God.

And once I saw it, I could not unsee it.

Because if God is the one sending the bus, if God is the one demanding a death, then Jesus is not saving me from sin. He is saving me from God.

He goes on to say that he felt like he was living with two versions of God under one roof—one wanted to run over him, and one wanted him to live. So he began to feel confusion of having conflicting views of God. Bill?

Dr. Craig: I think this poor fellow doesn’t understand that an analogy is usually meant to illustrate only a single point, and pressing it beyond that point will inevitably raise disanalogies so that it is no longer applicable. And asking a question like “Who is driving the bus?” is simply pushing the analogy far beyond the point. The point of the analogy was to illustrate substitutionary death. To ask who’s responsible for driving the bus isn’t part of that analogy. In a different analogy for substitutionary death you wouldn’t need to appeal to an agent at all. For example, suppose someone pushes you out of the path of a rockslide or falling limb thereby saving your life. In that case, the question is completely inappropriate in that sort of analogy.

Kevin Harris: Next up, Dan attributes all this to the penal substitutionary atonement. He writes,

The youth group preacher didn’t invent the story. That image of Jesus throwing himself in front of the bus is just a modern twist on an idea that has shaped large parts of Western Christianity for centuries.

It comes from a theory called penal substitutionary atonement. . . . In this framework, God is perfectly holy and cannot tolerate sin. Humanity has sinned, and justice demands a penalty. Someone has to be punished. Rather than punish us, God sends Jesus to take our place. Jesus absorbs the wrath we deserve, satisfies divine justice, and makes forgiveness possible.

So Dan is rejecting the PSA, which he says was established by Anselm and later developed by Calvin. Anselm, he says, described sin as an offense against God’s honor that needed to be repaid, and Calvin described sin as a legal crime with God as the judge and someone had to pay. Jesus stepped in as our substitute. Comment, if you would, Bill, on his analysis of the definition and history of the PSA.

Dr. Craig: St. Anselm did not develop or articulate the penal substitutionary atonement theory. He had a quite different theory of the atonement. Anselm’s great insight was that the justice of a perfectly holy and righteous God must be satisfied. God cannot just blink at sin and remain perfectly just.

Anselm figured that there were two ways to satisfy God’s justice—either by compensation or by punishment. He thought it could not be by punishment, or we would all be sent to hell. Therefore, he developed a theory of the atonement based on Christ offering compensation to God for our sins. On Anselm’s theory, Jesus is not our substitute; rather he pays to God a compensation on our behalf thereby removing the offense to God.

In contrast to Anselm, the Protestant Reformers I think correctly saw that punishment need not be meted out to us but that God Himself, in the person of Christ, could take our punishment upon Himself, thereby satisfying the demands of His own justice. So, either compensation or substitutionary punishment would satisfy the demands of God’s justice, so that God’s holiness and justice were not be compromised by our redemption and forgiveness.

Kevin Harris: Let me just sincerely say, I want everyone listening to get your book, Bill, on the atonement. I really do. I sincerely say that. Do it so that you can work through any questions you have.

Dan continues,

for the first thousand years of the church’s life, Christians did not talk about the cross this way [penal substitution].

Earlier Christians saw the cross primarily as a victory over death and evil, not as a payment to satisfy an angry God. They spoke of Christ breaking the power of sin, setting captives free, and restoring what was lost. God was not seen as the one demanding blood, but the one in Christ, rescuing humanity out of love.

So he seems to be embracing a Christus Victor view of the atonement, which he says is the earlier view in the church. Do you think that’s where he’s going?

Dr. Craig: I do think that’s what he’s describing—Christus Victor, the victor over sin, death, and hell. The idea of the Christus Victor theory of the atonement is that through our sin we have become captives of Satan, and Christ came to break the power of Satan and to set us free. But Dan is quite incorrect in saying that this was the only view among the early church fathers. In fact, the early church fathers reflected all of the various atonement motifs found in the New Testament and they therefore articulated a wide variety of atonement theories, including penal substitution. I provide quotations in my book Atonement and the Death of Christ from the early church fathers establishing this point.

Kevin Harris: Just to synopsize, Dan says his view of the atonement was emotionally and theologically damaging. We could go off on a tangent here—it brings up the psychological effect that a theological view can have. But what seems to be at issue is violence. Dan says there’s no way a violent transaction can be the center of the Christian faith—not if God is love. He says the penal substitutionary atonement is an example of a violent transaction rather than a loving God. Bill?

Dr. Craig: This is a very strange criticism when you think about it. Given the centrality of Jesus’ crucifixion to Christianity—that He died for our sins—violence is going to be at the center of any Christian atonement theory.

New Testament Christians believed Jesus to be the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53, who gives His life as an offering for sin. Jesus believed this Himself. He identified Himself with the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53. Given the centrality of the cross, violence is unavoidable in any atonement theory.

Kevin Harris: Getting back to who was driving the bus, Dan writes,

when Jesus went to the cross, he did not go to change God’s heart. He went to show us God’s heart. He went to expose the full weight of human violence, religious power, and political fear — and to absorb it without retaliation. He showed us what love looks like in the face of hate. He revealed a God who does not demand blood, but offers mercy even while being crucified. . . . He was breaking the cycle of retribution.

. . .

The bus that hit Jesus was not God’s judgment. It was ours. It was fear. It was empire. It was the machinery of religion and politics and power doing what it always does to those who disrupt it.

Dan doesn’t label his view of the atonement in this blog, Bill, but does this nonviolent, non-punishing view best fit into a Christus Victor theory that you were talking about?

Dr. Craig: No, it does not. What you’re hearing articulated by Dan is the atonement theory of old 19th-century liberal theology. Most of us think that liberal theology was destroyed by Karl Barth in the early 20th century, but I believe that today it is experiencing a comeback in the woke ideology of so-called progressive Christianity or what I call “neoliberalism”. There is a neoliberalism that is surging today, and I think it is based upon either a misunderstanding or else a misrepresentation of penal substitutionary theory. For example, it’s just a mischaracterization when Dan says that Christ “did not go to change God’s heart but to show us God’s heart.” Penal substitution does not say Christ went to the cross to change God’s heart—rather, it reveals the heart of God, the heart of God who so loved the world that He gave His Son to die for us.

Notice, as I said, that Dan’s own theory involves violence. Right at the very heart of it, Jesus, on his view, absorbs the violence. One of the greatest weaknesses of neoliberal theology is that it provides no account of how atonement is achieved. What are the mechanisms of atonement? How does sending Jesus to suffer a horrible death by crucifixion do anything to reconcile us to God? What is the mechanism of atonement?

I remember one person commenting that if someone were to leap into the water to save my drowning child and drown himself in the course of the rescue, then my response would be to say, “Greater love hath no man than this.” But if that person were just to say to me, “Look how much I love you,” and throw himself into the water and drown, his action would just be unintelligible. Again, this is the problem with neoliberal theology—it’s unintelligible how sending Jesus to suffer this cruel and violent death in the absence of penal substitution does anything to achieve our reconciliation with God.

Kevin Harris: Come to think of it, I hate to accuse Dan of being woke, but I think he’s kind of woke. He’s definitely using the vocabulary of dealing with the empire and political fear.

Dr. Craig: Yes, religion and politics, power – these are watchwords, as it were, of the political left, and you see it in these neoliberal atonement theories.

Kevin Harris: As we conclude, they seem to be calling for a kinder, gentler atonement theory. But as you’ve pointed out, there’s not a lot of compatibility. Is there no compatibility between a loving God and the penal substitutionary atonement?

Dr. Craig: Of course they’re compatible. Love and justice together lie at the heart of the penal substitutionary theory of the atonement. I think that’s why Dan felt himself pulled in two different directions—two “gods,” as it were. But these are not two gods; these are dual aspects of God’s moral perfection.

God is perfectly just and perfectly loving, and these meet at the cross. At the cross, the love and the justice of God kiss. Once we understand that Christ’s incarnation and death were motivated precisely by God’s matchless love for us condemned sinners, then we’ll begin to correctly understand penal substitution.

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