Is Penal Substitution Biblical? | Harding University - February 2018

Harding University in Searcy, Arkansas hosted Dr. Craig in February of 2018 for a series of lectures and discussions. Speaking at the Bible majors chapel for their Spring lecture, Dr. Craig talks on the question "Is Penal Substitution Biblical?" His lecture is followed by a brief Q&A.

DR. CRAIG: Thank you very much. This is my first visit to Harding, and it's an honor to be invited to give the spring lecture this evening. I'm also delighted to have the chance to speak in this chapel service. I must tell you how moved I really was as I listened to that Scripture being read and then that beautiful song sung acapella. It was wonderful; thank you.

The message of the New Testament is that God, out of his great love for us, has provided the means of atonement for sin through the death of Jesus Christ. In 1 Corinthians 15:3-5, Paul quotes the earliest known summary of the Gospel message that was proclaimed by all the apostles. He wrote,

I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve.

Notice that Christ is said to have died for our sins. How is it that Jesus’ death dealt with our sins? How did his death on the cross overcome the estrangement and alienation of sinners before a holy God so as to reconcile them to him? In handling this question we should distinguish between the fact of the atonement and a theory of the atonement. A great variety of theories of the atonement have been offered to explain the fact of the death of Christ providing the means of atonement with God. The church fathers, embroiled as they were in debates over the person of Christ (namely the Trinity and incarnation), devoted little time to reflection on what later theologians would call the work of Christ (for example, his achieving atonement). As a result, no ecumenical council ever pronounced on the subject of the atonement leaving the church without conciliar guidance. Competing theories of the atonement therefore need to be assessed by (1) their accord with biblical teaching, and (2) their philosophical coherence. This morning I want to argue that any biblically adequate theory of the atonement must include at its heart the doctrine of penal substitution.

What is penal substitution? Penal substitution 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 are no longer liable to punishment. Penal substitution is central to the account of the atonement enunciated by the Protestant Reformers. For example, John Calvin wrote,

let him be told, as Scripture teaches, that he was estranged from God by sin, an heir of wrath, exposed to the curse of eternal death, excluded from all hope of salvation, a complete alien from the blessing of God, the slave of Satan, captive under the yoke of sin; in fine, doomed to horrible destruction, and already involved in it; that then Christ interposed, took the punishment upon himself and bore what by the just judgment of God was impending over sinners; with his own blood expiated the sins which rendered them hateful to God, by this expiation satisfied and duly propitiated God the Father, by this intercession appeased his anger, on this basis founded peace between God and men, and by this tie secured the Divine benevolence toward them; will not these considerations move him the more deeply, the more strikingly they represent the greatness of the calamity from which he was delivered?

I want to argue that any biblically adequate theory of the atonement must include penal substitution as a central feature in discharging the demands of divine justice.

One of the most important New Testament motifs concerning Christ's death is Isaiah's Servant of the Lord. In the fourth of his Servant songs, Isaiah describes the suffering of the Servant of the Lord on behalf of the people. In order to facilitate our understanding of this text it will be helpful to read it in its entirety. Isaiah 52:13 to Isaiah 53:12 reads as follows:

See, my servant shall prosper;
    he shall be exalted and lifted up
    and shall be very high.
Just as there were many who were astonished at him
    —so marred was his appearance, beyond human semblance,
    and his form beyond that of mortals—
so he shall startle many nations;
    kings shall shut their mouths because of him,
for that which had not been told them they shall see,
    and that which they had not heard they shall contemplate.

Who has believed what we have heard?
    And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
For he grew up before him like a young plant
    and like a root out of dry ground;
he had no form or majesty that we should look at him,
    nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by others;
    a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity,
and as one from whom others hide their faces
    he was despised, and we held him of no account.

Surely he has borne our infirmities
    and carried our diseases,
yet we accounted him stricken,
    struck down by God, and afflicted.
But he was wounded for our transgressions,
    crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the punishment that made us whole,
    and by his bruises we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray;
    we have all turned to our own way,
and the Lord has laid on him
    the iniquity of us all.

He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,
    yet he did not open his mouth;
like a lamb that is led to the slaughter
    and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,
    so he did not open his mouth.
By a perversion of justice he was taken away.
    Who could have imagined his future?
For he was cut off from the land of the living,
    stricken for the transgression of my people.
They made his grave with the wicked
    and his tomb with the rich,
although he had done no violence,
    and there was no deceit in his mouth.

Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him with affliction.
When you make his life an offering for sin,
    he shall see his offspring and shall prolong his days;
through him the will of the Lord shall prosper.
    Out of his anguish he shall see;
he shall find satisfaction through his knowledge.
    The righteous one, my servant, shall make many righteous,
    and he shall bear their iniquities.
Therefore I will allot him a portion with the great,
    and he shall divide the spoil with the strong,
because he poured out himself to death
    and was numbered with the transgressors,
yet he bore the sin of many
    and made intercession for the transgressors.

New Testament authors saw Jesus as the Suffering Servant described in Isaiah 52 and 53. Ten of the twelve verses of Isaiah 53 are quoted in the New Testament, which also abounds in allusions and echoes of this passage. Jesus’ words over the cup at the Last Supper – “This is my blood of the covenant which is poured out for many” – echo Isaiah's prophecy of the Servant of the Lord who poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors yet he bore the sin of many and made intercession for the transgressors. Earlier that same evening, Jesus had applied Isaiah 53:12 to himself, “For I tell you, this scripture must be fulfilled in me, ‘And he was counted among the lawless,’ and indeed what is written about me is being fulfilled” (Luke 22:37). In Acts 8:30-35 Philip, in response to an Ethiopian official’s question concerning Isaiah 53 (“about whom does the prophet speak?”) shares the Good News about Jesus. 1 Peter 2:22-25 is a reflection on Christ as the Servant of Isaiah 53 who “bore our sins in his body on the tree.” Hebrews 9:28 alludes to Isaiah 53:12 in describing Christ as “having been offered once for all to bear the sins of many.” The influence of Isaiah 53 is also evident in Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Timothy, and Titus. New Testament scholar William Farmer concludes, “This evidence indicates that there is an Isaianic soteriology deeply embedded in the New Testament which finds its normative form and substance in Isaiah 53”.^[1]

The suffering of the Servant is agreed on all hands to be punitive. In the Old Testament, the expression “to bear sin (or iniquity)” when used of people typically means to be liable to punishment or to endure punishment. For example, Leviticus 5:1, “If anyone hears a public adjuration to testify and yet does not speak, he shall bear his iniquity.” Leviticus 7:18, “If any of the flesh of the sacrifice . . . is eaten on the third day, . . . it shall be an abomination, . . . and he who eats of it shall bear his iniquity.” Leviticus 24:15, “Say to the people of Israel, Whoever curses his God shall bear his sin.” And Numbers 9:13, “the man who . . . refrains from eating the passover . . . shall bear his sin.”

What is remarkable, even startling, about the Servant in Isaiah 53 is that he suffers substitutionally for the sins of others. Some scholars have denied this claiming that the Servant merely shares the punitive suffering of the Jewish exiles. But such an interpretation does not make as good sense of the shock expressed at what Yahweh has done in afflicting his righteous Servant, as well as is less plausible in light of the strong contrasts reinforced by the Hebrew pronouns drawn between the Servant and the persons speaking in the first person plural. For example,

Surely he has borne our infirmities
  and carried our diseases;
yet we accounted him stricken;
  struck down by God, and afflicted.
But he was wounded for our transgressions,
  crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the punishment that made us whole,
  and by his bruises we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray;
  we have all turned to our own way,
and the Lord has laid on him
  the iniquity of us all (Isaiah 53:4-6).

The substitutionary, as well as the punitive, nature of the Servant’s suffering is clearly expressed in phrases like “wounded for our transgressions,” “crushed for our iniquities,” “upon him was the punishment that made us whole,” “the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all,” and “stricken for the transgression of my people.”

The idea of substitutionary suffering for sin is already implicit in the animal sacrifices prescribed in the book of Leviticus and conducted in the tabernacle and later in the temple. The personal Levitical offerings were accompanied by a telling hand-laying ritual. The offerer of the animal sacrifice was to lay his hand upon the animal's head before slaying it. The Hebrew expression samak yado indicates a forceful laying of the hand. One was to press his hand upon the head of the beast to be sacrificed. Although the commentator Jakob Milgram has suggested that this “hand-leaning” ritual was meant merely to indicate ownership of the sacrificial animal, such an interpretation is implausible and trivializes an apparently important feature of the ceremony. Somebody pulling an animal by a rope around its neck up before the altar is just as obviously the person bringing his sacrificial offering as someone who carries in his hand a bird or grain for sacrifice. And if there were any doubt, a verbal affirmation would suffice. Rather, this emphatic gesture is plausibly meant to indicate the identification of the worshipper with the animal so that the animal’s fate symbolizes his own. Death is the penalty for sin, and the animal dies in the place of the offerer. This is not to say that the animal was punished in the place of the worshipper; rather, the animal suffered the fate that would have been the worshipper’s punishment had it been inflicted on him. The priest’s sprinkling the blood of the sacrifice on the altar, whatever its exact meaning, indicates minimally that the animal's life has been offered to God as a sacrifice to atone for the offerer’s sin. Similarly, in Isaiah 53 the Servant is said to make himself an offering for sin (verse 10).

It is sometimes said that the idea of offering to God a human substitute is utterly foreign to Judaism. But that is, in fact, not true. The idea of substitutionary punishment is clearly expressed in Moses’ offer to the Lord to be killed in place of the people who had apostatized in order to “make atonement'” for their sin (Exodus 32:30-34). Although Yahweh rejects Moses’ offer of a substitutionary atonement saying that “when the day comes for punishment, I will punish them for their sin” (verse 34), the author is nonetheless clear, and Yahweh simply declines Moses’ offer but does not dismiss it as absurd or impossible. Similarly, while Yahweh consistently rejects human sacrifice in contrast to the practice of pagan nations, the story of God's commanding Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac (whom the New Testament treats as a type of Christ) shows that such a thing is not impossible (Genesis 22:1-19). In Isaiah 53, moreover, the idea of the Servant’s substitutionary suffering is treated as extraordinary and surprising. The Lord has inflicted upon his righteous Servant what he refused to inflict upon Isaac and Moses.

By bearing the punishment for the people, the Servant reconciles them to God. While atonement vocabulary (in the Hebrew, kippur) is not used, the concept is clearly present. The Servant, by his suffering, brings wholeness and healing (verse 5). He makes many to be accounted righteous (verse 11). And he makes intercession for the transgressors (verse 12).

Returning to the New Testament, we find that Christian authors interpreted Jesus to be the sin-bearing Servant of Isaiah 53. 1 Peter 2:24-25 says, “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.” In light of Isaiah 53, texts like 1 Corinthians 15:3 (“Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures”) become pregnant with meaning. Though ambiguous when taken in isolation, when it is viewed in light of Isaiah 53 this passage takes on new meaning. There is no other passage in the Jewish Scriptures apart from Isaiah 53 that could be construed as even remotely about Messiah's dying for people's sins. The formulaic expression “died for our sins” thus refers to substitutionary punitive suffering. Similarly, 2 Corinthians 5:21 (“For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God”) is seen to echo in all its parts Isaiah 53. The expression “who knew no sin” recalls “the righteous one, my Servant, in whose mouth was no deceit.” The expression “for our sake he made him to be sin” recalls “the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” And the expression “in him we might become the righteousness of God” recalls “the righteous one, my Servant, shall make many to be accounted righteous.” Again, no other Old Testament passage remotely approaches the content of this sentence. The New Testament authors then, following Jesus himself in his own self-understanding, saw Christ as the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53 who died in the place of sinners bearing the punishment they deserved that they might be reconciled to God.

If this is correct then any biblically adequate theory of the atonement must include penal substitution as a central feature. Unfortunately, the doctrine of penal substitution has come under such formidable philosophical criticism that many today reject it. At the beginning of this talk, I said that theories of the atonement need to be assessed by their biblical adequacy and their philosophical coherence. We've seen this morning that penal substitutionary theories meet the first of these criteria. But many people contend that it fails when judged by the second criterion which amounts to saying that the biblical doctrine is philosophically incoherent. It is therefore vitally important that we consider carefully the philosophical objections raised against the doctrine of penal substitution. And that is the task that I have reserved for this evening's lecture.

QUESTION: When you see church history and you see people that are going to be martyred and they are going to die for their faith and they're going to be crucified. And you hear some of these people singing and they go worshipping God. Then you go and look at Jesus when he is in Gethsemane. He’s going to be crucified; he's going to be killed. But he's sweating blood and he's in such agony to the point of death. Do you believe that this has to do with the punishment that's going to be upon Christ? Because even his servants, they are going to be crucified, and they are like . . . but their master, the King of Kings, is going to the cross and yet he's to the point of death. Do you think this is related to the punishment he was going to take at the cross?

DR. CRAIG: I’m not sure. It may be. We should not minimize the agony of Jesus’ suffering compared to later martyrs because, after all, these later martyrs had the example of Jesus to follow. It was because they followed a crucified Savior that they could face burning at the stake or horrible torture with bravery. Now, if Jesus did think of himself as the Servant of the Lord of Isaiah 52-53 then he thought of himself as a sin-bearer. He was going to bear the sins of the people. At the Last Supper he seems to express this idea. So it could well be that the terror of the cross lay not simply in physical crucifixion but also in becoming the sin-bearer, having the wrath of Yahweh poured out upon him for the sins of the people.

QUESTION: Some people have expressed concern that groups of Christians would emphasize penal substitutionary atonement theory and how they spend a lot of time talking about how Jesus’ death on the cross can forgive us the guilt of our sin. But it doesn't say as much about how the other aspect of Jesus' life – the resurrection and being saved from the power of sin itself – [affects] my life, because I'm a sinner. How would you respond to those concerns?

DR. CRAIG: I think that this draws attention to one of the central differences between the Reformers’ doctrine of justification and the Roman Catholic doctrine of justification. For the Reformers, justification is a forensic act. It is like a legal pardon from the governor or the president. A legal pardon cancels one's guilt and liability to punishment, but it does nothing to reform the character of the person pardoned. In a same way, justification (as a forensic declaration of God – that we are pardoned for our sins) doesn't do anything to reform our character. That is the role of sanctification and requires regeneration by the Holy Spirit, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and living a life that is filled with the Holy Spirit so as to produce the fruit of the Spirit and increasingly be conformed to the image of Christ. Roman Catholics, by contrast, do not have a forensic doctrine of justification. They think of justification as a kind of moral transformation or infusion of God's grace into the believer. I think that that is to run together or conflate justification and sanctification which the Reformers properly distinguished. So this power over sin, the power to live the Christian life, that doesn't come through justification; that comes through sanctification and underlines the importance of the ministry of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

QUESTION: Sometimes when we talk about penal substitution, the understanding of “he bore the sins” is often coupled with “and God then forsook him.” So rather than saying he just bore the death but he was also forsaken, as Jesus quotes from Psalm 22 (“My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”). I wondered what your thoughts are in regards to, yeah, it is part of it that God died but also that God was separated from God. I would like to hear your reflections on the rejection of God.

DR. CRAIG: This comes from Mark's crucifixion narrative where he says Jesus cries out, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” – “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” He's praying Psalm 22 which is the prayer of God's righteous Servant in distress. The question is: What is the content of that forsakenness? Is it simply the deliverance over the physical death, or is it something more? Protestant Reformers interpreted it to mean something more; that there was a kind of relational rupture between Christ and the Father with respect to his human nature. That the human nature of Jesus was bereaved of the full felicity and blessedness and joy of divine fellowship and the beatific vision of God. I'm inclined to think that that is correct because it would underline the gravity of sin and the infinite consequences of sin that we could never pay for ourselves. That's why it would require a sort of divine-human substitute to pay the penalty for our sins. So we shouldn't think of Christ as separated from the Father in his divine nature; it would be Christ as separated from the Father in his human nature.