Scholars Scuffle Over the Atonement Part Two

Kevin Harris: Here is the second problem you list with Rillera’s approach: substitution and participation. Next clip.

Dr. Craig (recording): I think that this is the most fundamental and hence most consequential mistake in the book. He gives no argument for the incompatibility of substitution and participation. We can agree that Jesus is not construed as a substitute in an exclusionary sense, a sense that excludes us, but without thereby abandoning substitutionary atonement. As I explain in my book, Atonement and the Death of Christ, Christ is our substitutional representative. He is both our substitute and our representative, so that Christ functions as our proxy before God, and that combines these motifs of substitution and participation.

Dr. Botner (recording): I do think that what is happening here is telling, and I think it is a reason why this book will not move the needle for people that have already thought theologically and philosophically through penal substitution and have landed on that. The only way to completely undermine that concept, you would need to go beyond the biblical text. You really would need to discuss the various ways substitution and satisfaction and so forth have been understood within tradition and then demonstrate why those are insufficient, deal with a variety of other points. It would need to be a much larger book, and it would probably need to be several books—impossible to do, of course. But that is why I think that in some ways this book is kind of two books in one, and I think Dr. Craig’s response here is probably representative of how many theologians in his camp would respond.

Kevin Harris: So explain participation and substitution, if you would please, Bill. And why do you think that Rillera holds that substitution and participation are incompatible?

Dr. Craig: In substitution, one person takes the place of another. A good illustration would be a pinch hitter in baseball. The pinch hitter comes into the lineup and takes the place of another player. Now, in no sense does the pinch hitter represent that other player, and that is evident in that the player he replaces is not affected in his batting average by the performance of the pinch hitter. The pinch hitter is a substitute, but not a representative of the player he replaces.

In representation, on the other hand, someone acts on behalf of another person. For example, the baseball player will have an agent who will advocate for him in negotiations with the team. The agent is not in the place of the player, but he acts as his representative and advocate in the negotiations. So he is a representative, but not a substitute.

Now, these two roles can be combined. For example, if there is a meeting of stockholders of a company and we cannot attend the stockholders’ meeting ourselves, we will sign a proxy form authorizing somebody else to attend the stockholders’ meeting in our place and to vote for us at the stockholders’ meeting. That other person is both a substitute for us, in that he attends the meeting instead of us, but he is also our representative, in that he votes for us. These are not his votes. These are our votes that he casts.

And my claim is that participation in Christ is compatible with substitution when we think of Christ as our proxy before God. Christ is a substitutional representative, or a representative substitute, and therefore substitution and participation in Christ are fully compatible.

Now later in the podcast, Dr. Botner will try to deny that Rillera thinks that substitution and participation are incompatible. So I simply want to point him to page 247 of Rillera’s book, where Rillera writes, “It is obvious that Peter views Jesus as the suffering servant par excellence. But what prevents me from categorizing this as a substitution is that he simultaneously says that we are called to share in the same servant lifestyle. Substitution by definition precludes any sort of participation.” So he thinks that by definition substitution and participation are incompatible. And since the New Testament clearly teaches our participation in Christ, this leads him to reject Christ as our substitute.

Kevin Harris: Your third general criticism concerns Rillera’s denial that Christ’s death was substitutionary.

Dr. Craig (recording): With regard to substitution, which he rejects, he has to interpret the Levitical sacrifices in such a way that the animal’s death is not a substitution for the death of the offerer.

Dr. Botner (recording): This just demonstrates a real ignorance—I’m sorry to put it this way—but a real ignorance of scholarship on this. All of the experts on  . . . OK, you can find some who, for their doctrine of atonement, really want to hold on to this, but most experts, especially following Milgrom, recognize that the death is not a substitute for the worshiper. There is actually no evidence. It never says that in the biblical text, and you won’t find that in Jewish sources either. That is a concept that was read into animal sacrifice by Christian theology. That is to say that because Jesus was our substitute, and because his sacrifice is in certain ways analogous to ritual sacrifice, therefore the idea of substitution needs to be found in these animal rites. And it is not there.

Kevin Harris: Are you ignorant of Jacob Milgrom’s work, Bill?

Dr. Craig: On the contrary, in my book I interact extensively with Milgrom’s work. And Dr. Botner’s insulting comments show merely that he has not read my work. The point here, I think, is that Jesus’ death as a sacrificial offering for sin is foreshadowed in the Levitical animal sacrifices of the Old Testament.

Now, the fact is that the biblical text does not explain clearly the meaning of these rituals. They were undoubtedly understood by the people of that time, but unfortunately the biblical text does not tell us what the meaning of these rituals are. Therefore, the best we can do is to make reasonable conjectures about what these rituals meant.

Now, the substitutionary nature of the animal’s death is suggested, I think, by the symbolic hand-laying ceremony that preceded the killing of the animal. The offerer was to press his hand upon the animal’s head before slitting its throat and killing it. Now, Rillera follows Milgrom in saying that this ceremony merely indicates ownership of the animal. I find that utterly implausible. Dr. Botner asked, “Well, why is it surprising that this indicates merely ownership?” Well, I think at least two reasons.

First is the emphatic nature of the gesture. The worshiper is to press his hand upon the head of the animal just before he kills it, and this is plausibly meant to show his identification with the animal. The animal suffers the fate that would have been, and should have been, the worshiper’s fate. Death is the penalty for sin, and the animal dies in the place of the offerer.

Secondly, the idea that this just indicates ownership trivializes this important part of the literature. If there were any doubt about the ownership of the animal, a mere verbal response would have sufficed: “This is my sacrifice. This is my lamb.” So I find the interpretation of this ritual as being merely to indicate “This is my animal” to be utterly implausible.

Now, I want our listeners to be patient with me here, because I cannot resist responding to Botner’s further appeal in regard to the interpretation of the hand-laying ceremony by Philo of Alexandria. At the timestamp of about 53, he cites Philo of Alexandria’s Treatise on the Special Laws, Book 1, Sections 202 to 204, and Philo interprets the hand-laying ceremony to merely indicate that the offerer has clean hands before God, that he is a righteous and upright man. This is what Philo has to say:

Again, the hands which are laid upon the head of the victim are a most manifest symbol of irreproachable actions and of a life which does nothing which is open to accusation, but which is in all respects passed in a manner consistent with the laws and ordinances of nature. For the law in the first place desires that the mind of the man who is offering the sacrifice shall be made holy by being exercised in good and advantageous doctrines, and in the second place that his life shall consist of the most virtuous actions, so that in conjunction with the imposition of hands the man may speak freely out of his clean conscience and may say, ‘These hands have never received any gift as a bribe to commit an unjust action, nor any division of what has been obtained by rapine or by covetousness, nor have they shed innocent blood, nor have they wrought mutilation, nor works of insolence, nor acts of violence, nor have they inflicted any wounds, nor in fact have they performed any action whatever which is liable to accusation or to reproach, but have been ministers in everything which is honorable and advantageous, and which is honored by wisdom, or by the laws, and by honorable and virtuous men.

Well, this interpretation of the hand-laying ceremony is just laughable. The kind of person that Philo describes is precisely the sort of person who would not need to offer such a sacrifice! These sacrifices are offered by sinful people with unclean hands who need to have a sacrificial offering for their sin. As a Hellenistic Jew, Philo imposes all sorts of spurious meanings on these symbolic rituals.

For example, in Section 201, which precedes this interpretation of the hand-laying ceremony, Philo explains why a male animal has to be offered rather than a female animal. And he says,

Now the victim which is to be sacrificed as a whole burnt offering must be a male, because a male is more akin to domination than a female and more nearly related to the efficient cause. For the female is imperfect, subject, seen more as the passive than as the active partner. And since the elements of which our soul consists are two in number, the rational and the irrational part, the rational part belongs to the male sex, being the inheritance of intellect and reason, but the irrational part belongs to the sex of woman, which is the lot also of the outward senses. And the mind is in every respect superior to the outward sense, as the man is to the woman, who, when he is without blemish and purified with the proper purifications, namely the perfect virtues, is himself the most holy sacrifice, being holy and in all respects pleasing to God.

That is clearly a preposterous interpretation. That is a reflection of Philo’s own male chauvinism. Botner himself points out that Philo is the earliest Jewish interpretation that we have of this hand-laying ceremony. There is nothing prior to Philo that explains the meaning of this hand-laying ceremony. And yet The Special Laws is a late work of Philo, dating from around AD 40 to 50. This is centuries—over a thousand years—later than the initiation of these sacrifices. So it is just preposterous to think that Philo is giving us the correct understanding of the meaning of the hand-laying ceremony.

Moreover, one final point. Notice that if Philo’s interpretation were the true meaning of the hand-laying ceremony, then it would also falsify Rillera’s interpretation that the hand-laying ceremony was merely meant to indicate ownership of the animal. So nothing is achieved by Dr. Botner’s appeal to Philo of Alexandria.

Kevin Harris: Let’s continue with substitution, and you go to Isaiah 53 in this next clip, Bill. Here it is.

Dr. Craig (recording): A particular weakness in his case against substitution is that Jesus cites Isaiah 53 about the suffering servant in reference to—

Dr. Botner (recording): So notice that we just jumped from animal sacrifice to Isaiah 53, which has nothing to do with animal sacrifice. So already you can see Dr. Craig is assuming the dynamic of what the servant does in Isaiah 53 is equivalent to, or analogous to, what happens with an animal. Otherwise, how else would you explain the jump he just made? But that’s his assumption. That’s not anywhere in the text.

Kevin Harris: So did you make an unwarranted jump here, Bill?

Dr. Craig: Not at all. I’m offering here a critique of Rillera’s denial of Jesus’ substitutionary death. And there are two problems with that position. First, it forces Rillera to deny that the animal died in the place of the offerer, which seems implausible. Secondly, he has a very weak handling of Isaiah 53, where the servant of the Lord does suffer vicarious punishment for the people. So these constitute two independent biblical grounds for affirming Jesus’ substitutionary death.

I’m not saying that Isaiah 53 is about or connected to animal sacrifices. These are independent biblical grounds for affirming Jesus’ substitutionary death. And Dr. Botner will then go on to say that Craig is in fact right that the servant of the Lord in Isaiah 53 does die vicariously for the people.

Dr. Botner also recommends an essay by Bernd Janowski. Now, I discussed this essay on pages 40 to 43 of my book, and I would like to recommend to Dr. Botner that he read the essays by Hofius, Hermisson, and Spieckermann in the same volume, all of whom support a penal substitutionary reading of Isaiah 53. Dr. Botner also appeals to some intertestamental uses of the servant of the Lord, but these are ultimately irrelevant. What is important is the New Testament deployment of Isaiah 53. And here Rillera’s interpretation is very implausible.

Kevin Harris: One more clip, and in this excerpt you get to the fundamental failing when it comes to the death of the sacrificial animal.

Dr. Craig (recording): So the fundamental failing, I think, of people who try to minimize the animal’s death in the process of atonement is that they’re trying to divide up and separate or isolate different phases of the ritual, when in fact it all coheres together in a unified process.

Dr. Botner: That’s—yeah, I wouldn’t disagree with that. I think that there’s a hierarchical nature to the rituals, as Roy Gane and others have argued. I think you definitely see emphasis on aspects of the rituals being really important—the burning of the flesh and the blood in the priestly literature and in the Dead Sea Scrolls, and then within some early Christian texts and rabbinic literature, especially what you do with the blood, or the efficacy of the blood. But I would agree that it’s all part of the same ritual. But in terms of what gets the emphasis, it’s definitely the other things. It’s not the killing. The killing is prerequisite to what priests do with the sacrifice.

Kevin Harris: There seems to be a lot of tension when it comes to the death of the sacrificial animal and unpacking the meanings in all the various sacrifices. Botner says the emphasis is not the killing or death of the sacrifice. Bill?

Dr. Craig: Dr. Botner emphasizes that the animal’s death is not, as he puts it, the focus of the ritual. He says that the center of sacrifice is not the animal’s death. And I agree. Rather, as he says, the entire ritual complex involving death, the presentation of the blood on the altar, and the handling of the meat results in kipper, or atonement. And at about timestamp 104 in his podcast, he admits, in contradiction to Rillera, that death was absolutely involved in these rituals. And that is precisely my contention.

Kevin Harris: Well, it’s hard to know how to conclude today, Bill. Dr. Botner said in this response that there needs to be several more books from Rillera just to cover the unanswered issues that he’s raised. You may have some additional thoughts on some of the things in the interview with Sean, this response by Max Botner, or Rillera’s view on the atonement.

Dr. Craig: Dr. Botner says that one purpose of Rillera’s book is to take down penal substitutionary atonement. But in the end, he admits that Rillera fails to do so. First, Rillera does not deal with the penal aspect of PSA. Second, Rillera, he thinks, is wrong to deny that Jesus’ death was substitutionary. And finally, third, he agrees that Rillera is wrong to deny that Jesus’ death was an atoning sacrifice for sin in the sense of kipper.

But to end on a positive note, I want to agree with Dr. Botner that any adequate treatment of the doctrine of the atonement is going to involve an interdisciplinary discussion that draws together biblical theology, historical theology, and philosophical theology. And this is the approach that I’ve taken in my book, Atonement and the Death of Christ. It requires familiarizing oneself with all three of these disciplines and then trying to bring the insights together in a coherent way.^[1]