Does Penal Substitution Satisfy Divine Justice - Toronto 2018

During his Toronto speaking tour in January 2018 Dr. Craig gave a lecture at a Wycliffe Christian faculty/student luncheon on "Does Penal Substitution Satisfy Divine Justice?"

DR. CRAIG: Thank you. It's a delight to be with you here today. Although the headline event for this tour is the dialogue tonight with Rebecca Goldstein and Jordan Peterson, nevertheless I really enjoy these smaller events where I get to talk about my current work which is on the atonement. I'm glad to have the opportunity to interact with you about it.

1. Introduction

Any biblically adequate atonement theory must include the notion of propitiation, that is to say, the appeasement of God’s just wrath against sin.^[1] The source of God’s wrath is His retributive justice,^[2] and so appeasement of wrath is a matter of the satisfaction of divine justice. Biblically speaking, the satisfaction of God’s justice primarily takes place, not as Anselm thought, through compensation, but through penal substitution.^[3]

Penal substitution in a theological context is the doctrine that God inflicted upon Christ the suffering which we deserved as the punishment for our sins, as a result of which we no longer deserve punishment. This explication leaves open the question whether Christ was punished for our sins. Some defenders of penal substitution recoil at the thought that God punished His beloved Son for our sins.^[4] Even in their ringing defense of penal substitution, Steve Jeffery, Michael Ovey, and Andrew Sach do not define penal substitution in such a way as to imply that Christ was punished in our place. Rather they offer the subtler explication: “The doctrine of penal substitution states that God gave himself in the person of his Son to suffer instead of us the death, punishment, and curse due to fallen humanity as the penalty for sin.”^[5] If we take the definite description “the punishment due to fallen humanity” referentially,^[6] it refers to the withdrawal of God’s fellowship and blessing.^[7] This Christ suffered on the cross instead of us.

On such an understanding, God afflicted Christ with the suffering which, had it been inflicted upon us, would have been our just desert and, hence, punishment. In other words, Christ was not punished, but he endured the suffering which would have been our punishment had it been inflicted on us. We should not exclude by definition such accounts as being penal substitutionary theories, since Christ on such accounts suffers as our substitute and bears what would have been our punishment, thereby freeing us from punishment.^[8]

An attractive feature of such an account is that it enables the Christian theologian to avert so easily the standard objections against both the coherence and justice of penal substitution.^[9] For on such accounts it is false that God punished an innocent person for our sins, an assumption which lies at the root of the standard objections. Even so determined a critic as the 16th century unitarian theologian, Faustus Socinus, recognized that God might inflict non-punitive harsh treatment on an innocent person,^[10] Job being the paradigmatic example, and the discussion of such treatment takes us out of the philosophy of law and the theory of punishment and into the familiar concerns of theodicy.

Unfortunately, a penal substitutionary theory which does not affirm that God punished Christ for our sins seems less promising when it comes to satisfying the demands of God’s justice. Penal substitutionary theories hold that the satisfaction of divine justice, whether by a necessity of God’s nature or by a free choice of God’s will, is a pre-condition of God’s pardon and salvation of sinners. Here the superiority of a theory involving Christ’s punishment emerges over penal substitutionary theories according to which God does not punish Christ. For it is hard to see how divine justice could be satisfied by Christ’s voluntarily taking suffering upon himself if it were not a punishment meted out for our sins. If the punishment for an offense were, say, deportation, how could justice be satisfied by someone else’s voluntarily going or even being sent into exile unless it were intended to be a punishment for the wrongdoing in question? If the suffering or harsh treatment is not punishment, then the demands of retributive justice seem to go unsatisfied.^[11]

 2. The Alleged Unsatisfactoriness of Penal Substitution

Socinus objected, however, that neither could God’s punishing Christ in our place possibly meet the demands of divine retributive justice.^[12] For punishing another person for my crimes would not serve to remove my liability to punishment. How, then, can penal substitution satisfy God’s justice?

We can formulate this objection as follows:

1. Unless the person who committed a wrong is punished for that wrong, divine justice is not satisfied.

2. If God practices penal substitution, then the person who committed a wrong is not punished for that wrong.

3. Therefore, if God practices penal substitution, divine justice is not satisfied.

It follows that penal substitution is thus unsatisfactory.

3. Responses to the Alleged Unsatisfactoriness of Penal Substitution

3.1 Meta-Ethical Contextualization

In order to address the question of the satisfactoriness of penal substitution adequately, we must view it within the context of an over-arching meta-ethical theory about the foundation of moral values and duties. Who or what determines what satisfies the demands of justice? The classic proponents of penal substitutionary theory all held to a view of God as at once the supreme Legislator, Judge, and Ruler of the moral order. Contrast the U.S. separation of powers, according to which Congress defines crimes and their punishments, the judiciary interprets and applies those laws and punishments, and the executive holds the power of pardon.^[13] In God’s case all these powers are vested in the same individual. So if He determines that the demands of justice are met by Christ’s punishment, who is to gainsay Him? He is the source of the moral law, its interpreter, and its executor. He Himself determines what meets justice’s demands. So what is the problem?

The above response might seem to imply an unsettling account of satisfaction as so-called acceptation. John Duns Scotus suggested that God might have accepted any sacrifice He pleased as satisfactory for the demands of His retributive justice (Distinctiones in quatuor libros Sententiarum 3.19.1). Defenders of penal substitution have not been sympathetic to acceptation accounts.^[14] For then God might have accepted as satisfactory the death of any ordinary human being or even an animal. But then it is not true, as Scripture affirms, that “it is impossible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sins” (Heb 10.4).

Retributive theories of justice require not merely that the guilty deserve punishment but also that the punishment be proportionate to the crime if justice is to be satisfied. The objector to substitutionary satisfaction would find a sympathetic ear among penal substitution theorists, if he insisted that retributive justice, as we know and understand it, is essential to God’s nature and so could not be satisfied by mere animal sacrifices. But then the question persists: how does the punishment of Christ satisfy the demands of retributive justice?

3.2 Penal Substitution in Western Justice Systems

Perhaps some progress can be made toward answering this question by considering how penal substitution is regarded in our secular justice system. After all, if we are talking about retributive justice as we know and understand it, then divine justice must be significantly analogous to enlightened human justice systems.

The Anglo-American system of justice, in point of fact, does countenance and even endorse cases in which a substitute satisfies the demands of retributive justice. David Lewis claims that although criminal law does not permit substitutionary punishment, nevertheless civil law does. A friend can pay a person’s fine if both agree to the arrangement. “Yet this is just as much a case of penal substitution as the others.”^[15] Lewis rejects the view espoused by expressivist theorists of punishment that these penalties are not really punishments. Some of these fines, Lewis remarks, are just as burdensome as prison sentences, and we might add just as censorious. If we were single-mindedly against penal substitution, Lewis says, then we should conclude that fines are an unsatisfactory form of punishment, that such punishment, in other words, fails to satisfy justice’s demands. But we do not.^[16] Lewis draws the lesson that penal substitution may sometimes satisfy justice’s demands just as the Reformers maintained.

Indeed, civil law features penal substitution much more commonly than Lewis seems to realize, being not merely condoned, but actually enjoined by the law. I have reference to cases involving so-called vicarious liability. In such cases the principle of respondeat superior (roughly, let the master answer) is invoked in order to impute the liability of a subordinate to his superior.^[17] For example, a master’s being held liable for acts done by his servant in the course of his duties. On the contemporary scene this principle has given rise to a widespread and largely uncontroversial principle of the vicarious liability of employers. An employer may be held liable for acts done by his employee in his role as employee, even though the employer did not do those acts himself. Cases typically involve employers being held liable for the illegal sale of items by employees but may also include torts like assault and battery, fraud, manslaughter, and so on. It needs to be emphasized that the employer in such cases is not being held liable for other acts, such as complicity or negligence in failing, for instance, to supervise the employee. Indeed, he may be utterly blameless in the matter. Rather, the liability incurred by his employee for certain acts is imputed to him in virtue of his relationship with the employee, even though he himself did not do the acts in question. In cases in which the employee cannot pay the penalty exacted by the court for the wrong done to the plaintiff, the employer will be held solely responsible for the satisfaction of justice’s demands.

Moreover, pace Lewis, criminal law also involves cases of penal substitution, for vicarious liability also makes an appearance in criminal law as well as civil law. There are criminal as well as civil applications of respondeat superior. The liability for crimes committed by a subordinate in the discharge of his duties can also be imputed to his superior. Both the employer and the employee may be found guilty for crimes which only the employee committed. For example, in Allen v Whitehead (1930) the owner of a café was found to be guilty because his employee, to whom management of the café had been delegated, allowed prostitutes to congregate there in violation of the law. In Sherras v De Rutzen (1895) a bartender’s criminal liability for selling alcohol to a constable on duty was imputed to the licensed owner of the bar. In such cases, we have the guilt of one person imputed to another person who did not do the wrongful act (the so-called actus reus). Interestingly enough, vicarious liability is a case of so-called strict liability, where the superior is held to be guilty without being found blameworthy, since no mens rea (blameworthy mental state) is required for conviction. Note, moreover, that in a criminal case involving vicarious liability, the punishment of the employer may satisfy for the employee as well. In fact, the employer may actually be charged as the principal in the crime and his employee as a mere accessory, in which case only the punishment of the employer can satisfy for both.

Such cases of substitutionary punishment are especially common when a corporation is held vicariously liable for crimes committed by employees. David Ormerod explains, “Corporations have a separate legal identity. They are treated in law as having a legal personality distinct from the natural persons–members, directors, employees, etc–who make up the corporation.”^[18] In cases in which the demands of justice are too heavy for individuals to bear, the corporation may be held solely responsible for satisfying justice’s demands.

The lesson to be learned from cases of vicarious liability is that the demands of retributive justice are frequently met by persons other than the person who committed the wrong. What is required for the satisfaction of justice is that only persons who are liable for a wrong are to be punished for that wrong. Accordingly, premise (1) should be revised to:

1*. Unless a person who is liable for a wrong is punished for that wrong, divine justice is not satisfied.

But then, given the Reformers’ doctrine of the imputation of our sins to Christ,^[19] Christ is legally liable for our sins and so may satisfy divine justice by being duly punished for those sins. In the Reformers’ view Christ did not merely suffer the punishment due us for our sins. Rather, as the Swiss Reformed theologian Francis Turretin explained, our sins themselves were imputed to Christ so that he might be justly punished for them.^[20] In turn, Christ’s righteousness was imputed to us. Turretin emphasizes that such imputation is a purely forensic action and does not involve either an infusion of sin into Christ or an infusion of Christ’s righteousness into us.^[21] The Reformers insisted that because our sins were merely imputed to Christ and not infused in him, Christ was, as always, personally virtuous, a paradigm of compassion, selflessness, purity, and courage. Nevertheless, he was reckoned legally guilty before God. Therefore, he was legally liable to punishment.

We can think of the imputation of our sins to Christ as a case of vicarious liability of a superior for his subordinate. Just as in civil and criminal law, a superior can be held vicariously liable for the wrongdoing of his subordinate, so God held Christ vicariously liable for our sins. Therefore, he was legally liable to punishment for our sins. Since in Christ’s case someone who was liable for a wrong was punished for that wrong, his punishment for our sins does not violate a necessary condition of the satisfaction of divine justice as the critic of penal substitution maintains.

3.3 Substitution and Representation

The above considerations suffice to dispense with the objection. But now consider once more:

2. If God practices penal substitution, then the person who committed a wrong is not punished for that wrong.

In cases of penal substitution is it always the case that the person who did the wrong is not punished for that wrong?

Contemporary theologians have disputed the point by distinguishing between exclusionary place-taking (exkludierende Stellvertretung) and inclusionary place-taking (inkludierende Stellvertretung).^[22] This important distinction requires a word of explanation about substitution and representation respectively. In cases of simple substitution someone takes the place of another person but does not represent that person. For example, a pinch hitter in baseball enters the lineup to bat in the place of another player. He is a substitute for that player but in no sense represents that other player. That is why the batting average of the player whom he replaces is not affected by the pinch hitter’s performance. On the other hand, a simple representative acts on behalf of another person and serves as his spokesman but is not a substitute for that person. For example, the baseball player has an agent who represents him in contract negotiations with the team. The representative does not replace the player but merely advocates for him.^[23]

These roles can be combined, in which case we have neither simple substitution nor simple representation but rather substitutional representation (or representative substitution). A good illustration of this combination of substitution and representation is to be found in the role of a proxy at a shareholders’ meeting. If we cannot attend the meeting ourselves, we may sign an agreement authorizing someone else to serve as our proxy at the meeting. He votes for us, and because he has been authorized to do so, his votes are our votes: we have voted via proxy at the meeting of shareholders. The proxy is a substitute in that he attends the meeting in our place, but he is also our representative in that he does not vote instead of us but on our behalf, so that we vote. This combination is an inclusionary place-taking.

Turretin believes that Christ, in bearing our punishment, was both our substitute and our representative before God. He states, “the curse and punishment of sin which he received upon himself in our stead secures to us blessing and righteousness with God in virtue of that most strict union between us and him by which, as our sins are imputed to him, so in turn his obedience and righteousness are imputed to us.”^[24] This relation is not one of simple substitution; there is an inclusive union here which is the basis of the imputation of our sins to Christ and his righteousness to us. According to Turretin, so long as Christ is outside of us and we are outside of Christ we can receive no benefit from his righteousness. But God has united us with Christ by means of a twofold bond, one natural (namely, communion of nature by the incarnation), and the other mystical (namely, the communion of grace by Christ’s mediation), in virtue of which our sins might be imputed to Christ and his righteousness imputed to us. Christ was punished in our place and bore the suffering we deserved, but he also represented us before God, so that his punishment was our punishment. Christ was not merely punished instead of us, rather we were punished by proxy.^[25] For that reason, divine justice is satisfied.^[26]

How does it come to pass that we are so represented by Christ? As mentioned, Turretin proposed two ways in which we are in union with Christ, first, by way of his incarnation and, second, by way of our mystical union with him. Although theologians often appeal to this latter union of believers with Christ to explain the efficacy of his atonement, such an account seems to be viciously circular.^[27] Turretin emphasized that it is our union with Christ that is the basis of the imputation of sins to Christ and of our justification.^[28] But the problem is that the mystical union of believers with Christ is the privilege only of persons who are already regenerate and justified. There is here a vicious explanatory circle: in order to be in mystical union with Christ one must first be justified, but in order to be justified one must first be in mystical union with Christ. What is needed is a union with Christ which is explanatorily prior to (even if chronologically simultaneous with) imputation and justification.

Turretin’s first proposal is therefore to be preferred.^[29] In virtue of Christ’s incarnation (and, I would add, his baptism, whereby Jesus identified himself with fallen humanity), Christ is appointed by God to serve as our proxy before Him. The Logos, the second person of the Trinity, has voluntarily consented to be appointed, by means of his incarnation and baptism, to serve as our proxy before God so that by his death he might satisfy the demands of divine justice on our behalf.

Herein we see the organic connection between Christ’s incarnation, death, and resurrection. God’s raising Jesus from the dead is not only a ratification to us of the efficacy of Christ’s atoning death; it is a necessary consequence of it. For by his substitutionary death Christ fully satisfied divine justice. The penalty of death having been fully paid, Christ can no more remain dead than a criminal who has fully served his sentence can remain imprisoned. Punishment cannot justly continue; justice demands his release. Thus, Christ’s resurrection is both a necessary consequence and a ratification of his satisfaction of divine justice.

4. Concluding Remarks

In summary, while proponents of penal substitutionary theories which do not feature Christ’s being punished for our sins may have difficulty rebutting the charge that on such theories Christ’s suffering is unsatisfactory, the proponents of penal substitutionary theories which do feature Christ’s being punished for our sins are not so clearly vulnerable to this charge. We need to keep in mind that God, as the supreme Legislator, Judge, and Ruler, Himself determines what satisfies the demands of His justice. If we say that retributive justice, as we know and understand it, belongs essentially to God, the question will then become why substitutionary punishment cannot satisfy the demands of retributive justice. We saw that in both civil law and criminal law we find cases of penal substitution which are regarded as satisfactory of justice’s demands. We may think of Christ as being vicariously liable for our sins and his punishment as satisfying for us, just as an employer might satisfy justice’s demands on behalf of his employee.

Moreover, an inclusionary penal substitutionary theory does not preclude that we are punished for our sins in Christ’s being punished for our sins. For Christ’s being divinely and voluntarily appointed to act not merely as our substitute but as our representative enables him to serve as our proxy before God, so that when he is punished, we are punished by proxy, to the satisfaction of divine justice.

Thank you very much. I think we have time for questions.

MODERATOR: We do. I'm seeing lots of hands which is very exciting to see. I will remind you to try and keep them as succinct as possible because there are lots of people asking questions, and understand Dr. Craig may not be able to spend the three hours on each question that you might like. We have about 20 to 25 minutes.

QUESTION: Thank you for that talk. It was really interesting and helpful. I'm curious about the argument strategy of the comparison to civil and criminal law. I imagine somebody who finds this theory of the atonement unjust might very well say that these criminal and civil practices are also unjust. Then I'm wondering if you need to also defend this practice, not just point that it happens. I could imagine somebody maybe working in philosophy of law saying all of the things that you're pointing out – those are things I think should be done away with and that if the employer truly hasn't done anything wrong (if they've posted the right signs and they've had all the training seminars and they've told everything, you know, if they've not done anything wrong), then they shouldn't be held guilty or liable or anything like that. It should just be the employee. So I'm just wondering if in the argument structure if you also need to defend the practice that you find in civil and criminal law.

DR. CRAIG: It's very important to understand the question that I was addressing today. I was not addressing the question of the coherence of substitutionary punishment nor the justice of penal substitution. I have written papers on those as well. But those are separate questions. This is a very peculiar question today that is rarely discussed. It's on the satisfactoriness of penal substitution. Does it serve to satisfy the demands of justice? We're not making a pronouncement here or a defense of the justice of the practice of vicarious liability in our justice system. We're just noting that in our justice system it is widely and deeply ensconced in our justice system that the demands of justice can be met substitutionally. So the person who would impugn penal substitutionary theory as unsatisfactory has got some burden of proof here to show why think that this won't satisfy divine justice. The universal appeal is typically to say we have no experience of this. Folks who say this are just ignorant of the law. They will say there's nothing in human experience that would support this when in fact, as I say, Western systems of justice are widely characterized by this notion of substitutionary punishment. So I would have a whole different talk, which I've given, in order to defend the justice of this. But here I'm just asking you, given that this is practiced, does it meet the demands of justice. And it seems to me that it does meet the demands of retributive justice as we know and understand it.

QUESTION: That was incredibly edifying.

DR. CRAIG: Oh, good! I find it so. Thank you.

QUESTION: That was very, very helpful. Thank you. But I do have a question. You said that Jesus takes the punishment that we would get otherwise, and that also that Jesus' death is satisfying justice in the same way that once a prisoner has fulfilled their sentence they can't be held in jail anymore in the same way that Jesus can't be held dead anymore. What I'm wondering is: in order to satisfy justice, if we take the punishment, we go to hell for eternity. So in order to satisfy justice, why did Jesus not have to go to hell for eternity?

DR. CRAIG: This is one of the questions that Socinus posed against penal substitution. The response of thinkers like Francis Turretin I find entirely adequate. He would say in virtue of the worth of Christ's divine person that what he suffered, though not in duration the same as eternal damnation, is in intensity equivalent to it and therefore fully satisfactory of divine justice. He experiences bereavement of full fellowship with God and the beatific vision and full felicity with God that he's enjoyed from eternity, and for the divine Son to suffer that is something so agonizing that it is equivalent to being damned in hell.

QUESTION: I have one question as it pertains to the vicarious liability. One of the concerns I can see with that model is that it depends on how it's understood. If Christ is necessarily held liable, is there a necessity for his liability? And if so, if Christ is necessarily held liable for the people below him, then that necessitates the incarnation and impinges on the divine will.

DR. CRAIG: I would see no necessity involved at all. In fact, I emphasized that Christ volunteers to serve as our proxy before the Father in bearing the punishment for our sins. So I would say no, there's no necessity laid upon him to do this. It's an act of grace and condescension and represents his great love. Don't confuse that with the question of whether or not the satisfaction of divine justice is necessary in order for forgiveness of sins to take place. Many theorists think that in order for God to forgive sins the satisfaction of divine justice needs to occur first. But that's a quite different question as to whether Christ had to serve as our proxy before God and be the sin-bearer.

QUESTION: In regards to the employee examples, in those examples do the employees receive no punishment as well? Or is it just the example that it's imputed?

DR. CRAIG: It varies. As I say, both are held guilty and so both could receive punishments from the court. But there will be cases where the penalty – the fine – would be so enormous (perhaps millions of dollars in damages) that the poor employee could never meet it. In that case, the employer (especially if it's a corporation) will be held solely responsible for satisfying justice’s demands. And there you have what seems to me to be a clear case of penal substitution.

QUESTION: Thank you for a very inspiring talk. Back to like three questions ago, I had the same question. I'm not completely getting it yet. The examples with like me having a parking ticket and whether you pay it or I pay it, it is taken care of. So the substitution there works, and the consequence is the same. Or with the vote by proxy also. We just exchange who is doing the action, and the consequence is the same. But if I died for my sins then the consequence is I'm still going to hell. If Jesus died for my sins, I'm going to heaven. It seems that there's actually kind of a switch in meaning of death. The wages of sin is death for us means spiritual death. But what Jesus does for us is his physical death on the cross, not spiritual death, I think.

DR. CRAIG: Well, that's not the view of your classic Reformed theologians like Turretin that I mentioned or of contemporary penal substitution theorists who would say that as horrible and ugly as the physical tortures and crucifixion of Christ might be, that doesn't constitute the essence of the punishment for sin that he bears which, as you say, is spiritual death. Turretin describes it as Christ being bereaved of the full beatitude and full felicity and beatific vision and fellowship with the Father – that he experienced a kind of divine forsakenness or abandonment, and that is the true punishment for sin that he bears for us and therefore far, far more horrible than the physical tortures that he endured which many other crucified persons have also had to endure.

QUESTION: Thank you, Dr. Craig. You have a gift for making theology interesting. I say that as a scientist. The question I have is: if the basis in which Jesus becomes our proxy pertains to the incarnation and potentially baptism, would that not entail that he stands in his proxy for all humanity and therefore all humanity is atoned for?

DR. CRAIG: Yes! This is a very, very interesting question again. One of the objections raised by Socinus is that if Christ died for all persons and paid the penalty for their sins then why isn't universal salvation the result? Why are some people still damned? This is not an objection to penal substitution as such. This is an argument concerning the extent of the atonement. Reformed theologians like Turretin actually agreed with this objection and therefore believed that Christ died only for the elect. Therefore, the non-elect – their sins are not atoned for and therefore they are damned. Now, I don't like the doctrine of limited atonement. I think that it's not biblically supported. So what I would say is that although Christ's atoning death is sufficient for the salvation of all persons, its actualization requires a response of faith and repentance on the part of the individual believer in order to become a beneficiary of that payment. Here, the legal notion of pardon is very instructive. Divine forgiveness of sin is much more akin to a legal pardon than it is to the kind of forgiveness that typically takes place in interpersonal human relationships. Because as a result of divine forgiveness of sins our guilt is abolished and our liability to punishment is annulled. In other words, what God issues to us is a legal pardon of our wrongdoing so that we are no longer liable to punishment. Now, pardons require acceptance by the pardonee. The courts have ruled in the past that in order for a pardon to be fully efficacious it needs to be accepted by the pardonee. And in any case, pardons can be conditional. The president or the governor may issue a pardon which is efficacious on certain conditions being fulfilled. So, suppose that God has issued the pardon for sin on the condition of repentance and faith. In that case, that pardon, though achieved by Christ's death, will only be efficacious when the conditions of repentance and faith are met by the individual person. So I would say that, yes, Christ's death is universal in covering the penalty for all sin but that it becomes an efficacious pardon of our sins only insofar as we accept it by repentance and faith.

QUESTION: I guess the difficulty it seems to me though is nevertheless if the sin has been atoned for and if it's the case that God cannot justly punish sin that has already been punished, how is it that God can justly punish sinners in the case that they declined the pardon?

DR. CRAIG: Because they have refused the pardon for those sins and therefore they're still liable to punishment. That's what a pardon does. It removes a criminal's liability to punishment. So in a case like this, the pardon is simply null and void until the pardonee accepts it, and then it becomes efficacious. There was one case in the United States where the governor pardoned a particular criminal and he delivered the pardon to the U.S. Marshal who was carrying it to the warden of the prison, but before it could be delivered the governor changed his mind and withdrew the pardon. The courts ruled that the pardon was inefficacious because it had not been delivered and accepted by the pardonee. Even though it had been issued by the governor, it had traveled by a U.S. Marshal to the warden, it was a done deal. But it hadn't been delivered and accepted and therefore it was inefficacious and the man was not pardoned. I think something like that is similar in the case of those who refused the divine pardon that God offers them for their sins. They're still liable for punishment.

QUESTION: I have a question regarding the incarnation with regards to its relation to Christ's ability to be our proxy. Regarding Christ’s incarnation and in union, is that union a result of God coming to Earth and participating in humanity in the form of Christ? Is that what creates that union which allows him to be the proxy for us? Is that what you were saying?

DR. CRAIG: Yes, I think so. The Council of Chalcedon says that the one person who is the second person of the Trinity has a divine nature that is complete and true, but then he also has a rational soul and body and therefore a true human nature. So he's truly God and truly man having two natures.

FOLLOWUP: As a result of that, because he's truly human, the incarnation forms that union which allows him to be the proxy.

DR. CRAIG: I think it forms the necessary condition. It doesn’t seem to me that it is sufficient, but it would be a necessary condition. I think the notion of being appointed by God, especially through the baptism of Jesus, that you have this notion that the God-man becomes our proxy. And I say that because from my reading about the baptism of Jesus this is a very peculiar scene where Jesus, though sinless, goes to John for a baptism for the repentance of sins. What in the world is he doing there? He doesn't belong there. He doesn't have any sin to repent of. And he says to John, “Let it be so for now. We're doing this to fulfill all righteousness.” And the commentators that I’ve read suggest this is the way of Jesus identifying himself with fallen humanity in its sin even though he himself is personally without sin. By seeking John's baptism he identifies with us in our fallenness. So that would seem to be . . . and it’s the beginning of his ministry. Right? This is the inauguration of his messianic ministry. So it would seem to me just a singularly appropriate moment to think of this appointment to being our proxy before God.

QUESTION: Just a quick question. There are other models of atonement that seem to me to bring insight into Christ's work. I just wonder if you could comment on that.

DR. CRAIG: Yes. The doctrine of the atonement in the New Testament has been very aptly compared to a multifaceted jewel, and there is a multiplicity of motifs in the New Testament: sacrifice, penal substitution, satisfaction of divine justice, ransom, moral influence. I think all of these are facets of this beautiful jewel which is the doctrine of the atonement. Gemologists call that central facet of a cut stone “the table” of the gem. I think that the table of the jewel which is the doctrine of the atonement is penal substitution. It is the central facet around which the other facets are clustered through which they are seen, and they all then redound to the beauty of the whole. In my work on the atonement, although penal substitution lies at the center of it as the table of the gem, I'm going to be discussing as well things like ransom and moral influence and Christus Victor and other facets of the atonement that are also important as well.

QUESTION: You've described retributive justice as part of the essence of God or of God's character. Certainly one can see that exegetically both in the Old and New Testament. But what about the restorative justice of God? You've talked about Christ's death satisfying the demands of justice, but the demands of justice as you have described it is only being the demands of retributive justice. Surely, if Christ's death is satisfying the demands of justice it is also satisfying the demands of restorative justice, and if we bring the restorative justice side into the discussion, how might that add to or reshape . . .?

DR. CRAIG: I haven’t explored that because the theory of punishment with which I’ve been interested takes place within the context of the theory of retributive justice. The notion of retributive justice is that the punishment of the guilty is justified because the guilty deserve punishment. That's the notion of retributive justice. One’s theory of punishment will be based upon one's broader theory of retributive justice. It seems to me that's what's at play in Christ’s penal substitution – he suffers the just desert for our sins. Now, beyond that with respect to restorative justice, that may be some other facet of the atonement that I haven’t occupied myself with. I am very open to any suggestions that you have in that area. But in my work, what I’ve been working on is theory of punishment, and that tends to focus on retributive justice.

QUESTION: Does the flogging and mocking of Jesus constitute divine punishment? And if so, is there any overlap between the human punishment and divine punishment, or are they the same thing perhaps?

DR. CRAIG: I don't know. I think that they're certainly possible to have a kind of double agency whereby the instruments that God used to punish Christ could have been in part the Roman and Jewish authorities who unjustly killed and tortured Jesus. When you read Isaiah 53 on the suffering that Yahweh inflicted on his righteous servant, what's striking about that chapter is that the Servant suffers unjustly for the people's sins. He was righteous. He was God's righteous Servant who did not deserve this, but nevertheless the Lord laid on him the iniquity of us all. It pleased God to crush him, Isaiah says. So it may well be that you have here a kind of double agency whereby the earthly powers that tortured and crucified Christ were instruments that God used to partially carry out this substitutionary punishment.

MODERATOR: Thank you very much, Dr. Craig.